Thaw reveals sons’ backyard handiwork

Most people are glad to see the winter snow melt. Not me. Our lawn looked lovely under its pristine blanket of snow. But that which lies beneath makes me shudder.

The first sunny day in March found me on our front porch, surveying our attempts at landscaping.

I was fairly certain we have a yard, but most of it was covered beneath mounds of boy residue. I picked my way around a skateboard minus two wheels and three neon-green squirt guns. Scattered across the yard were a Big Wheel, a rusty red Radio Flyer with its handle broken and axle bent, and two Jedi light sabers.

Gloomily, I gazed at the so-called flowerbed around our tree, where I spotted the missing skateboard wheels. It used to be a flowerbed anyway. Every spring a dozen crocuses would peek through the bark surrounding the tree. As they withered, daffodils and tulips appeared, adding brilliant splashes of color to our sparse yard.

Tulips are sturdy flowers, but even they can’t survive being plucked up, bulb and all, by a boy who wants to surprise his mom with flowers.

Now even the bark is gone. How can 50 pounds of bark just disappear? Grass gradually reclaimed the flowerbed.

Giving up on the front yard, I headed to the back, cautiously peering around the corner of the house. It didn’t look too bad. There were four bicycles in various degrees of dismemberment spread along the fence line. Someone is always borrowing a part from a brother’s bike and forgetting to replace it. We can’t go on family bike rides because only two or three bikes are ever completely assembled at one time.

The lawn itself was undisturbed. At least they didn’t dig up the grass. I ventured farther into the back yard toward the garden spot. This is a wild area of overgrown lilac bushes, sickly apple trees and the ruins of a vegetable garden.

Something caught my shoe, and I fell headlong into what should have been a patch of weeds. The ground gave way beneath my knees. I clutched wildly at tufts of grass.

When the dust settled, I found myself in a waist-deep pit. When I said my sons could dig in the back garden, this was not what I had in mind. Who would have thought small plastic shovels, a hoe and a broken rake could create this chasm?

The hole was easily 4 feet wide and 4 feet deep. The sides were reinforced with 2x4s. They had made considerable headway on a large tunnel. Small boys are amazing structural engineers.

This is what our attempts at landscaping have come to: a front yard that looks like we’re having a perpetual garage sale and a backyard tunnel that would make a Canadian pot smuggler proud.

While trying to figure out how to haul myself out of the hole, I discovered the solution to my landscaping problem. It’s easy, cost-effective and organic.

I’m just going to hunker down in this hole until it snows again.