Backyard Safari

I spent a lot of time outside as a kid. Sure, I had video games from the time I was 7; I watched a lot of cartoons, or as much as could be achieved through a roof-mounted antenna; and I had (and still do have) pretty bad pollen allergies. But all of these things didn't prevent me from enjoying the outdoors, even if it just meant playing in my backyard. With my next-door neighbor Tina, I climbed trees, played in the sandbox, jumped off the swing set, hid in the shed, and generally took advantage of the green space immediately available to me.

If my previous post didn't make it clear, nowadays I still spend a lot of time outdoors, although mostly in the service of making my backyard more hospitable. Of the many reasons I do this, one has increasingly been on my mind. I hope my kid likes being outside as much as I do, and I want our current backyard to be as inviting as the one I enjoyed during the first nine years of my life. (Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy the backyard of the house we moved to in 1989. It was much, much bigger. My current backyard is just more in keeping with the yard I first enjoyed.)

Right now, Hollie is re-reading Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder. The gist of his argument is that kids aren't spending enough time exploring and engaging with nature, with the end result that they're more hyperactive, prone to behavioral disorders, and generally disconnected from the living environment around them.

Now, you won't catch me banning video games or TV from our house, but I hope to expose my kid to the wonder of the outdoors, even, and especially, the outdoors in her own backyard. As soon as she can crawl, she'll crawl through the shade that covers our property. As soon as she's able to stand, she'll be standing barefoot in the grass. As soon as she can toddle, she'll likely be doing so right through the flowers planted in my landscaped beds.

And I want to show her the things I find fascinating, like these crazy mushrooms we found in the mulch last fall.
It's scientific name is Phallus rubicundus, although we can save that particular piece of etymology until she's a little older.

Or we can revel in this crazy weed that grew in one of last year's hanging baskets. It started growing last year in a basket that we used to plant a few bulbs. When it was small, it looked an awful lot like some of the things we actually put in there on purpose. It got about a foot tall last year, never flowered, then wilted when the frost came last winter. (Yeah, I'll admit it. I was lazy and didn't take care of it last year.) Then in the spring, SURPRISE! It came back and kept growing and growing.
I don't know if you can appreciate this without a human reference point, but that sucker is about 6 feet-4 inches tall. When I started fixing up the backyard last week, I decided that this would be the very last weed I took care of. And when I pulled it out of the pot, it took all the dirt with it, because the root had curled round and round the basket.
The root was about 3 feet long and wrapped around the basket almost three times. I guess that explains why the heavy winds we had earlier this year never uprooted it. I don't know if these sorts of things will amaze my daughter as much as me, but I hope she gets a little of my curiosity.

And while I may get arguments from Hollie if I try to take a little kid up a 10-foot ladder, I feel like I have to share an image like this next one. I know it shows off a little bit more of my laziness, but in my defense, I did clean out the back gutters a couple of times this season.
I recognize the danger in letting the gutters fill up, and I'm usually much better about it, but this picture is almost worth it. And it was even more impressive when you were actually looking at it. Had to be at least a hundred tiny maple trees growing in the piles of whirligigs.

I'm not saying that sharing all this with my daughter will somehow make her a better person or a more well-behaved child, but it certainly couldn't hurt, right?

Unless we fall off the ladder...