My Dash: Week 3

We lived on about a half acre lot when I was kid. There was a narrow strip of wood that divided our yard from the backyard neighbor's property.  My brother P and I played back there regularly. My dad dumped the grass clippings, fallen branches, and weeds back there. There was a lovely lilac bush in one corner, wild berries along the front edge and sumac bushes. Shortly after my best friend E and I watched "The Secret Garden" for the first time we decided to make a garden back there.  We made an agreement with my little brother P and her little brother M that they could have most of the woods, but I wanted the corner with the lilac bush.  We made a rock wall to divide the boys' and girls' sides with limestone rocks we found while digging out weeds. That made things look pretty and tidy. We planted some flower seeds, but I think it was too shady back there. We encouraged the plants already growing there that we deemed "pretty"and pulled out anything "ugly" and threw it over on the boys' side. There was an old stump for sitting on. I think we spent several weeks working on it.  The crowning piece was a sort of hammock/stick bridge that we made by cutting lengths of sticks that were approximately equal and lashing them together. I remember that it was sturdy enough to walk or sit on, but that rough edges of the thick sticks made it impossible to swing up on it without getting scraped. We had to climb one of the trees that we had strung it to in order to step on. Too bad I don't have a picture of it. I remember it looking kind of like this: