My Childhood Yard (Completed)

My Childhood Yard

Sometimes, when my busy life catches up to me, I tend to think back to the easy going times in my childhood. We were errant, carefree children in a playground.

Oh, take me back to those days when we were innocent, wild, and free, happy to be running through dirt and grass in our bare feet. My younger sister Janice and I grew up in a humble, one storey house, but it was our back and front yards in which all our adventures (and misadventures) took place.

My backyard was like a forest ready to be explored. It was filled with gardens and plants. A wood of towering pines stretched to the skies behind the fence on the far edge of our yard, enhancing the mysteriousness before it was cleared. During the summer, golden sunlight would sunlight would peek through the branches in sparkling shafts.

Like the many activities and games that children would engage in at a playground, so our yard was a place full of obstacle courses, and games ready to be imagined.

Boy, did my sister and I get into mischief. With the whisper of the summer breeze in our ears, we would chase each other noisily around the outside of the house, either playing tag or hide and go seek. Dirt was always under my nails, pesky as always, but I didn't mind one bit. Sometimes I would even throw off my shoes in the warm weather and get my feet muddy. The air echoed with our bubbling laughter and the chirping birds.

My dad kept quite a few plots of soil where he grew a colourful rainbow of plants, flowers, vegetables, and even flowering trees. The garden that surrounded the backside of our house was where we would also make our games. A decorative border of rocks surrounded my dad's plants and flowers, a solid guarding wall. Those rocks were our balance beams that my sister and I would take turns walking on, until we were caught by grown ups.

When we were doing our balancing acts, there were other games to be made up. Mom had used a shovel to dig up a section of dirt for us to play in. Sometimes my sister and I would do long jump. The ditch in the mud was a ravine the we, nimble as deer, would leap over.

Oh, how we loved playing in our puddle of dirt. Mom would also lug an enormous bucket of water from the snaking garden hose, for us to create mud. The large pile of dirt was our kitchen - a small square table would be laden with our toy pots and pans. An old, peeling bench sat, holding a scattering of our playthings.

Fallen petals would be snatched up by our dirt covered hands, ready to decorate our mud pies and cakes. My dad grew almost every blossom - from crocuses to lilacs to bulbs, roses, and tulips. There were plenty of those fallen petals to use for our "cooking". Too often, like naughty children, we would even pick off my dad's flowers, a type of flower called "Bleeding Hearts" in the front yard, and we would use those in our cooking as well.

Cooking was not all we did. Like skittering squirrels, we scrambled through the garden seeking fun. The wooden picnic table sat in the middle of our backyard, a host for family gatherings, barbecues, and our imagination. Sometimes, it was a plank on a ship; other times it was a cliff we jumped off, or a hospital bed where we played doctor.

Beside the table stood a metal clothes hanger, one that could spin like a merry go round. There, Mom would hang up our freshly washed clothes and bedsheets, drifting in the wind like mist.

Far to the right was where my dad tended his assortment of beans, radishes, squash, zucchini, and chilli peppers. Then, there were wells of soil for growing a small strawberry and blueberry plant. My sister and I would sneak through a monstrous maze of brambles by the neighbor's fence. We ignored the stinging pricks of thorns in our fingers, stuffing our faces with black raspberries, just like a pair of chipmunks. Our hands and faces would be sticky with berry juice.

My dad would often give us tours of his garden, which he tended diligently, while our eyes widened in curiosity. His tomatoes were the prize of his garden, luscious and red, big as bowling balls.

At night, we would sometimes lay down in a tent, listening to Dad tell of stories: whispers of planets, space, galaxies, and the far away night sky. We were campers in our own yard.

During the fall, we would rake up leaves into mountains, then leap into a sea of red, gold, and brown. Winter was a time for trekking through deep snow in boots and bundled up clothing. It was a blur of snowball fights, forts, and snow angels.

We were a family of four, so my parents would join us outdoors. One time I was even buried halfway in the snow by my dad. The icicles hanging off the edge of the house were our swords, which our parents always yelled for us to throw away. But I heard my sister say that one time, my mom and dad had both grabbed the huge icicles and had their own swordfight. It was fun to play make believe though.

However, there was one thing in our backyard that we avoided all year long. It was a patch of poison ivy that grew in a cluster. Only my dad was large enough to step over it.

My backyard was an enormous playground, with so many things to do, see, and play on. The front yard was lovely as well, with its scattering of trees, bushes, cherry blossoms, and plenty of grass to run through. There were whitewashed steps jutting out from the door to my house. It was where I often sat to think and read.

Things were quite relaxing, until I discovered that under the steps was where a hive of bees slumbered in the musty dark. I ran away insanely when the bees attacked as an army. My skin was throbbing from their stings, and tears were a streaming waterfall down my face.

To be completely honest, not all of my yard memories were the best, but most of them were. My adventures and mishaps we thrilling and wonderful experiences. They gave me a constant sense of freedom and peace to be with nature.

Thinking back to those times, I wouldn't trade my childhood memories and games in my yard for anything else in the world. My sister Janice and I spent our childhood days in the front and backyards of the one storey house, on 356 Norene Street.