I have stood looking out this kitchen window for 37 years, 2 months and 20 days. It’s hard to realize I’ve lived in this home for more than half of my life. I’ve written previously about this kitchen window, here and here but today, as I look outside, I was thinking about how this yard has changed over the years.

When I first moved here, the oldest of my youngest two children (confused?) was only two years old and at the time there was an apple tree in the yard. He loved to pick apples off the ground and begin eating them, dribbling juice down the front of his shirts.

We had large pine trees along the fence line on the west side of our property.

One of those trees fell during the ice storm and struck the house right above my bedroom window, scaring the bee-jesus out of me and sending me running from the bedroom. Mondays–V3E35–Trees, Trees, Trees.

Before the Great Hunter decided to trim the bottom of the trees (much to my dismay and…the top heaviness is what caused the tree to fall…), my boys used to love to play under them.

We had a less-than-friendly neighbor on the other side of the trees (the lady thought it would be a good idea to post a “No Trespassing” sign on the chain link fence, because we all know 3 and 6 year olds can read and understand a sign). One year the boys went through a spell of playing ball in the back yard. We put up a partial privacy fence to try and keep the balls in our yard, but occasionally, one still went over the fence. The neighbor lady was so “friendly” that she came to my house with a tennis ball and said “I brought your ball back”. I thanked her and then she said, “I don’t want your boys climbing the fence to get their ball back anymore.” I said “okay, can they knock on your door and ask to go through the gate to get it?” She said “No. We will return them after we have mowed the grass”, i.e., after they’d been run over by the mower. I had some less-than-friendly words for her then and it wasn’t long after that they put up a privacy fence along their entire property line. We still had our partial fence up, and continuing with their neighborliness, they drove 3″ screws through the back of their fence to prevent anyone (namely small boys and dogs) from going between the fences which were about 9″ apart. Those screws didn’t last long; we cut them off and I almost called the police. Luckily, it wasn’t that much longer they moved out and became slum lords.

Originally, the back yard just sloped up to the back chain link fence. Not long after the Great Hunter and I married, he built the first block retaining wall.

And after the slum lord next door let their wooden privacy fence rot, we put up our new fence.

At one time, we also had a Weeping Willow tree on the east side of the yard. I liked the look of that tree, but it was constantly dropping little limbs all over the yard, so after about ten years, we cut it down.

The neighbors on our east side are nice people, but the man does no upkeep to the home or yard. So to combat the less than desirable view of their bedraggled yard, we put up a partial privacy fece on that side too, which now needs to be replaced.

Just so you know, I am somewhat adverse to change, unless the change is my idea. That being said, WordPress has for several years encouraged their users to change from the “Classic Editor” to their “Block Editor”. That meant I would have to learn something I didn’t want to learn, so I continued to use their option of the “Classic Editor”. That is…until today. WordPress has eliminated the “Classic Editor” so this is the first post I’ve had to make using the “Block Editor.” I am not a happy camper, but hopefully, it will turn out okay.