Growing Wild in the Backyard

If you had to choose one word to describe Adelaide, that word would most definitely be 'curious'. She was by far the most curious child living on Oak Street. Although she was only three, she was determined to experience life to the fullest extent, which meant her mum and daddy had to keep a careful eye on her.

One day, as Adelaide was playing in the yard, her daddy called over to her and her sister Elspeth. Elspeth was five, and was much better-behaved than Adelaide, so she walked carefully over to the flower garden at the back of the house where daddy was pulling weeds for mum. Adelaide went tumbling topsy-turvy as she scrambled across the yard to learn what daddy had found. As a result, Elspeth reached the posies looking neat and trim, and little Miss Adelaide arrived in a very crumpled, rumpled and bedraggled state indeed.

But, Oh! What did daddy have to show them? She had never imagined anything so magical could exist, but there it was, an amazing creature that he said was a caterpillar. It was a huge, fat caterpillar, bright green with red and blue polka-dots and a yellow crown. And while she stood looking at it, it reared up and waved four of its tiny front legs around. Adelaide wanted to keep it, but daddy said it had to live by the flowers. It was hard to tear herself away, but there were new discoveries to be made.

One thing about daddy, he was very creative. On one side of the house was a trellis covered in hollyhocks, and sometimes he would pick the fragile, pink flowers and buds and make hollyhock dolls ~ one large, upside-down flower for a gown and a tightly-curled up bud for the head. They were as beautiful as fairies, and Adelaide could have as many as she liked to play with. Those were special days.

Adelaide had a secret. On the edge of the backyard was a big, old barn. On rainy days, she loved to sneak into the ramshackle building and creep up the boards nailed to the wall until she got to the loft. There was everything there! Rusty mattress springs, bent nails, pieces of old machines and furniture were scattered about around the empty spaces where the floor hadn't fallen through. Adelaide never stayed long, because she was not allowed to climb up to the loft. But one day, she got caught. She was so busy staring at all the wonderful, useless treasures that she didn't here her mum calling for her until until she was at the bottom of the make-shift ladder. That afternoon Adelaide got a spanking.

Another fun thing to do with Elspeth was to make leaf sandwiches. Elspeth had to make them most of the time, because Adelaide wasn't very good at cooking yet. Elspeth would pick leaves off of a tree in the front yard, gather up the nice, sticky sap with a twig and spread it on the leaves. Adelaide got to eat them. Sometimes when they played with pots and pans in the sandbox, Elspeth would mix water and sand together with a stick and make cakes, and Adelaide had to eat that, too. She didn't like that nearly as well, so it was all right when daddy found out what they were doing and made them stop. This time Elspeth got the spanking, and that made Adelaide a little bit happy, because Elspeth almost never got spankings.

The most exciting thing they ever did was to slip out of the window on summer evenings when they were supposed to be sleeping and run down the block to play with Bobby Soul. He was older than they were, and very naughty, but he had the most wonderful ideas! In Bobby's backyard was a splintery old trailer. Adelaide, Elspeth and other neighborhood children would get into the wagon and run from one end to the other, making it rock up and down ~ thump, thump, thump. All of the shrieking usually brought their parents out into the yard and back to bed they would be sent.

When summer was almost over, the plum tree by the sidewalk would begin to drop sweet, juicy plums all over the grass. It was fun to walk in circles around the tree, looking for the plumpest fruit. Mum said the ones on the ground had worms in them, but they were so hard to resist. Being good can be a trial when you are three years old.

Time rolled on, and one day mum and dad packed everything into boxes and put them into a big truck. They told Adelaide they were going to live somewhere far away, which caused a big, hurtful lump in her throat. She didn't want to live anywhere but in the pretty white house with a front porch in the little town where she was born. As they drove away down the road, she watched the only world she had ever known become smaller and smaller, until all that was left to do was turn back around to look at the road ahead and imagine what was coming. And Adelaide was curious.