Backyard Shenanigans

As if the mini van, the house on a cul-de-sac street and the fenced yard weren't enough to label us as suburbanites, we put up a wooden play set in our yard a couple of weeks ago.

Now, we do have a lovely park just two miles down the road, there are no continuous sidewalks leading to the park in our rapidly changing rural-to-suburban Southern town, and sometimes I've just had enough of schlepping my child in and out of the car just to do something as simple and enjoyable as catching some air on a swing. And although there is a covered picnic area at the park, the play area itself has no shade, which means come summer time the children are scorching their little bums on the sizzling metal and plastic playthings like a rack of ribs on a barbecue.

But enough of my rationalizing and justifying. Time for a picture and video tour of how it all went down.

It started out with a bunch of guys coming to take down five trees in our back yard. (I hate taking down trees, by the way. It makes my inner tree hugger sad. But a few of these weren't in great shape to begin with, so....)

This guy here, way up in the tree, was making me particularly nervous with that chainsaw dangling from a rope at his waist.


I'd like to add that that these guys, who were very polite, told me they would be there "sometime this week" but "definitely not on Monday." When did they show up? Monday. About 12 seconds after I put Nolan down for a nap. When I mentioned my sleeping two year-old, whose windows face the backyard, one of the guys said, "So...you want us to use the quiet chainsaw?"

Har, har, har.

Surprisingly, Nolan slept through the ENTIRE tree removal -- from chainsaws to shouting to trees falling to stump grinding. I was shocked, and a little disappointed. I think he would have gotten a kick out of some of the action.

I ended up tweeting about the tree removal as it was happening, and I received a hilarious haiku back from someone I follow (who only tweets in haiku form) and who also follows me: "One time a tree guy /yelled down to my staring son, / "Hey! Stay in school, kid!" #goodadvice"

About a week later, the play set arrived, as did the guy who put it up. (As much as we like the do-it-yourself projects, Bill and I decided that given the time it would take to build and put something like this up ourselves, this time it was worth paying someone else to do.) Not nearly as exciting as the tree removal, but at least this time I had something to show Nolan when he woke up from his nap besides an empty space where trees used to be.



As you can see, he approves.



We've been having some fun on it as well, given that the swings, fort and climbing rope can hold adults. I think the dogs were a little jealous of how much fun we were having, especially when Nolan started calling out to them from up in the fort.

Good girl, Murph! from Kathleen on Vimeo.

After awhile, Murphy decided she'd had enough and was going to get in on some of this play set action.

Circus Dog from Kathleen on Vimeo.

The next time she irritates me, I may just sell her to the circus. (Note: After I realized she was on the third rung, I stopped the camera and helped her get down. She was fine, totally unharmed, and she hasn't attempted it again -- nor will I let her try again!)