Adventures in the Backyard: A Wonderful World

When I was a kid, playing in the yard meant running around with friends, rolling down hills, or hopping on the tree swing. We played hide-and-seek, kickball, freeze tag, capture the flag, and climbed trees.

Having a lawn meant digging in the dirt, making mud pies, and playing with toys under the shade tree. Even exploring by myself as a child brought great excitement, always a mystery to be solved in my small suburban childhood yard. 

Sometimes we packed a picnic and put a blanket on the grass. Looking for four-leaf clovers, avoiding stepping on bees, but loving the energy of their hum. Other days, we foraged for edible plants in the yard, imagining we had to survive on just the provisions the yard granted us, sometimes including grapes, blackberries, and mulberries. 

When we found “potato bugs” or Jerusalem crickets, we thought they were the fiercest and most interesting creatures ever! We would observe ant trails, trying to get inside their heads. Roly polies (pill bugs) were abundant; we would admire their different sizes and colors and the way they rolled into a hard protective ball when threatened.

Adventures awaited us every day. We would go out into the yard with shovels, cups, spoons, magnifying glasses, containers and cardboard boxes. We would go on a safari and never leave our property, each day being very satisfying. Remember to blow all the seeds, all at once, off the white dandelion head, so you can make a wish!

If we were really fortunate or we stayed out past dark, we might see rabbits, raccoons, opossums, squirrels, or an occasional fox. Birds were always part of the yard environment as well, including owls, hawks, crows, blue jays, mockingbirds, and so many more.

In Amelia Island yards, kids can observe antlions, with their perfectly calculated cone-shaped ant trap — a lesson in geometry and physics! 

The great golden digger and the cicada killer are both wasps that hunt down caterpillars and cicadas, stun their prey and take them into an underground burrow for their future wasp offspring to feed on. 

The eastern giant swallowtail lay eggs on our citrus trees and their caterpillars and chrysalis both resemble bird poop, which is genius! I look forward to this every year, hoping to raise a giant swallowtail butterfly in the yard.

The passion vine is loaded with caterpillars and I am happy to share as many leaves as the Gulf fritillaries need to become butterflies this season. Love to do my part.

Children can find the last molt from a cicada larva on an oak tree left before the adult flew off. The clear exoskeleton is a magical sign indicating how amazing life is. The incredible transformation of a ground larva to a flying, noisy creature that floods our summer months with the cry of the cicada. 

If children are lucky, they encounter fireflies at night in their very own yard and listen as bumble bees come passing through during the day to visit the native flowers. A visit from a praying mantis, a slow, powerful, awe-inspiring creature, is always special.

After reminiscing about the wild kingdom that was my childhood yard, I realize what a diverse, interesting, and exciting place it was for us kids. I want my grandchildren to be able to explore a grand safari in the yard. Discovering a spectacular metallic beetle or watching a wasp drag a caterpillar below ground, finding four-leaf clovers, exoskeletons, fairy rings, blowing on dandelions, and splashing in mud puddles — what an adventure! The yard, what a fantastic place.