Yard Work

It is hard to remember a more glorious Labor Day weekend. No rain, low humidity, and mornings and evenings that are cool enough to nudge sweaters out of closets from their summer-long slumber.

For the first time since spring I worked on my yard.

There is a trail behind our house that leads to our neighbor. It runs across our ground cover, continues 50 feet further through our gently-packed woods, then spills out into daylight onto our neighbor's grassy yard. We created it years ago when my not-yet-daughter-in-law lived with us one summer and had to trek through the woods to catch the camp bus she chaperoned on her way to work each day.

We have called it Lianna's path all these years, but since another of my sons and his family now live on that neighboring street, I think we might rename the trail, The Children's Path. In a most enchanted way, the route my children have to take to reach me is literally over a river (okay, a stream, but still!) and through the woods.

The wooded part of the trail is lined with fallen limbs from the surrounding trees and raked clear to create a dirt walkway. Where the trail breaks into the open on our back yard, I laid facade stones (left over from renovations we did ten years ago) along the sides to guide the way. And to finish it off, I went to a local quarry, purchased two tons of white crushed pebbles and set them down between the stones. It may not be elegant but it works just fine.

The path is not complete. It never will be. I must clear it regularly of debris and intruding grass. In autumn it gets all but obliterated by the falling leaves. And I continually wonder how I might make it better.

But it has brought whimsy and enchantment to our backyard. It possesses all the ingredients of childhood fantasies: safety and danger, daylight and darkness, home and adventure, stasis and prospect, beckoning but a bit frightening. I even imagine a day sometime soon when my first grandson will come toddling out of the woods, on his very own, and down the pebbled path, a little breathless with adventure and very proud of his courage.

The beginnings of the romance with these enchanted woods. Christopher Robin couldn't ask for more.