Part 2: "Loose Parts" Toys and Belly-button Patches
Beus Pond is a little bit closer to home than the world of Go Diego! Go, just a mile or so up into the foothills above South Ogden. Tucked in among the houses that have grown up around it, this little man-made drainage pond surrounded by thick stands of trees is the "back-to-nature" spot of choice for locals seeking a spot to meditate – or to chuck crusts of bread at waterfowl. The cattail filled pond is good for bird watchers, and if you're patient, and silent, other kinds of wildlife will eventually also show themselves.
And even if you don't stray off of the asphalt path that has been provided, apparently, for the sole use of dog walkers and preteens on motorized skateboards, you can almost imagine that the scrub oak, box elder, and cottonwood trees go on and on into some imagined pristine wilderness instead of into a subdivision of ridiculously over-sized and under-landed single family dwellings.
It’s not much of a “wilderness,” but as we drive into the small parking lot that fronts the park, the boys, unaware of my private cynicism about the setting of our little walk, immediately voice their opinions about our choice of hiking spots. Eighteen-month-old Jack blurts, "Wow, trees," and his older brother simultaneously queries, "We're coming here?" The enthusiasm in their voices is enough for me. Baby Jaguar is banished for now. We ought to leave the yard more often.
Not that our yard is actually such a bad place to visit. We have over 20 trees in and around our yard: a shared stand of scrub oak on the north, four overgrown and slightly spooky looking ash trees (two for the front and two for the back), a mature apple tree that produces mighty delicious pie apples, one maple, three box elders, two shared conifers, a walnut, countless bushes and hiding places, and still plenty of space at the center to run and relax.
Several scrub jays, a few robins, at least one downy woodpecker share the yard on a seasonal basis with a family of Quail and a mating pair of Magpies who have built an impressive nest in the biggest backyard ash.
We bought the property with our boys in mind. It was a run-down fixer-upper with what my brother observed was “a killer yard; a great place to play.” In fact, it's a great "place" period.
Yet in spite of all of these assets, I spent all summer this year working on what the sign at The Home Depot calls a “yard improvement” – a play structure of the club-house-from-a-kit variety. It was a gift from my father in-law, meant to give my children (and their often present cousins) "something to do" to get them out of the house and into our big, supposedly empty back yard. About two weeks before this years nasty fall rains hit, I finished, proud that I was able to put the thing together in only roughly four times the recommended time for my "skill level." At least I got to be outside.
Of course, putting that much time and effort into the project made me want to show it off. I naturally called my wife the minute that I finally assembled the last pieces at half-past ten on a moonlit Thursday night. "STEP 36-C attach plastic climbing rocks (11) with #8 1 ½” carriage bolts (11), ¼” nylon insert lock-nuts (11), ¼” lock washers (11), and #18 1/8" stabilizer screws (11)." Check.
"That's great, Babe. Kathy's bringing the kids over tomorrow for piano lessons. They'll all get to try it out," she said, happy, I'm sure, that I'd finally have no excuse for avoiding my lawn-mowing responsibilities. When she and the boys arrived home from her parents later that night she was a only a little annoyed that I woke the somewhat reluctant four-year-old and made him "try-out" the new slide, straight from the car seat, in footie pajamas. I wouldn't have, but I wanted to see him experience what he'd been waiting so many months to try.
I called Emily the next day from work and asked for the general appraisal from the nieces and nephews. "They liked it," she said; "Endless trains up and down the rock-wall and the slide." Good. "But they were more interested in the belly-button patch," she said.
“Belly buttons,” or “cheesies” if you prefer, are the fruit of a plant also called cheeseweed, common mallow, or scientifically, malva neglecta, which has infested my yard and as far back as I can remember, my childhood. A transplant from Europe, the common mallow can either grow up into a bush or trail along the ground, and it grows almost anywhere, including in the dry, un-watered soil next to our new swing-set (Arnow 372).
The fruit of these plants, firm and slightly nutty in taste, is also apparently highly prized by my nieces and nephews who spent the remainder of the afternoon clustered around the un-mown section of yard near the play-set harvesting what my niece Katie unfeelingly called "real treasure."
"Didn't they play on the swings at all?" I asked. Consoling me, my wife reminded me that "the Petersons already have a play-set, and they probably don't have a belly-button patch." I’m vindicated in that respect at least. I'll never need to mow the lawn again and it's a lot easier to neglect a "cheesie" garden than it was to build the "Mount Forest II."
In fairness to the rather expensive clubhouse, the children did use the built-in picnic bench as a place to “sell” and sort their find. But in general, for the children, the play-set was appreciated but superfluous.
Without the swing-set, our yard already had the pieces of what Architect Simon Nicholson describes as "'a loose-parts toy.'" Nicholson’s theory is that "'[in] any environment, both the degree of inventiveness and creativity, and the possibility of discovery, are directly proportional to the number of variables in it'" (qtd. in Louv 86). Richard Louv expounds upon the theory as it pertains to nature; “a typical list of loose parts for a natural play area might include water, trees, bushes, flowers, and long grasses, a pond and the creatures within it along with other living things, sand (best if it can be mixed with water), places to sit in, on, under, structures that offer privacy and views (Louv 86).
I was attempting, through my construction of what I must describe as a “fixed-parts toy,” to improve upon an area that already possesses nearly all of Louv's criteria. Why build a clubhouse? Who needs it? We already had one that needed no improving. Out of sight in one of our yard’s massive snowball bushes is a hide-away that we call “William’s perch.” Scramble up and in and he is already more secluded than he would be in any room in our house. Once ensconced in his seclusion, aside from the occasional encounter with one neighbor who takes an unusual exception to his being there, Will needs to acknowledge no one else (he regularly ignores our calls to dinner). I still wonder what Will gets to see in there. I’m too big to fit inside, which I think is the point. It’s his place. I understand. There are, frankly, experiences that are better had alone.
As for the playhouse...we dig it too, and as long as we get to keep the other options as well, well, we'll take both.
1 comment:
I had almost forgotten about the "cheesy plants" I used to forage in as a child growing up in Utah. My guess is that I've eaten around 200 "cheesies" in my lifetime, but its been a long time since my last.
Would that the next cheesy I eat connects me with the young mind I viewed the world with when I ate the 200. The living of my adult life seems to have encrusted my mind with some noxious film -- some grey vale has descended and found anchor over my perception. The sensitivity and wonder that spontaneously arose in the midst of the natural, semi-natural, and mundane has been dampened.
I still hope to rend the vale. It may take another 200 cheesies, rather than just the one. But that sense which drew your nieces and nephews to the "treasure" in your backyard, is a treasure itself.
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