Your backyard!

[Ho-Oh]

When we were young children, we were generally excited by anything that moves, and most of the time, adventurous. For you, most of your "exploring" memories would've been in your backyard, where you could run around behind bushes, look for bugs, sit down in the sun, swim in a pool and explore every inch of that (if you had one), or just look for things in general.

So, what I want you to do is to describe how you saw your backyard as a child - what you did there then and what you do there now. If you've moved, that's fine, just compare your first backyard to your current one (or if you're at a campus somewhere, describe your backyard at home). Now compare it to now, what do you see? Feel free to comment on why/how that changed.

If you didn't have a backyard, instead describe somewhere you enjoyed exploring as a child and compare that to now.

 

[Oryx]

The first backyard I remember what when I was in ~third grade, when I had my huge super nice backyard. I had a big inground pool with a water slide, and a gazebo and a really big deck haha. Unfortunately we tried not to explore much because it was Texas and there were fire ants everywhere and we were scared of them. But we swam a lot!

Now I have a crappy little postage stamp backyard that I've stepped into like once, haha. It's all overgrown and we never use it. Oh well.

 

[Overlord Drakow]

Like Toujours, I used to have a massive back garden. No swimming pool though but I would sometimes play a bit of cricket lol. Not like proper cricket obviously but there was enough space to bowl and bat and make runs. I've played hide and seek in my back yard before too. Fast forward to the present and while my back garden is still quite big, I don't do anything in it any more.

 

[Cello]

Aw dude, THIS IS MY THREAD.

Back when I was young I lived with my two cousins, one who's like a month younger than me and another who is 2 years younger, and everyday we would go outside to play *drumroll*
POKEMON ADVENTURES!
We would sit down and draw out the world map and Gym leaders, then go outside and play.

At the first place we lived (which was a small trailer park), we had a shed that was surrounded by a lot of trees that would be our main area to play and use our imagination. We would pretend it was several different buildings like the Pokecenter or the Pokemark. Near the shed and trees was this MASSIVE forest though, that had many trails in it that was open to use, and we would go in there and pretend it was a Viridian Forest type area. Out past the trees there was a humongous pasture with cows that we would run around in as an open field, which in the center of the pasture was a small area enclosed in trees with a little water spring with water falls that we called Paradise, which we just used frequently as a water area.

After about a year of living there, we moved to the city. We lost the whole open yard thing, but gained something cooler: a HUGE vacant parking lot that was part of our backyard. We lived near the city court house, and our house's backyard was at the edge of the parking lot. Rarely ever was it filled with cars.
We had a bit of a small backyard closed off by trees from the neighbors, as well as a bit of a small front yard. We would travel back and forth between the two yards from the sides of the house for several parts of our adventure. Then we would use the parking lot for a lot of the towns in our Pokemon adventures. On the other side of the parking lot was some nice sidewalks and trees that we would play on too.
I would have to say that the coolest thing that has ever happened to having a parking lot for a backyard though is when it snowed, the city would send out the clean up crew to push ALL of the snow in the parking lot over to where our house was. Combined with the ice it would make a MASSIVE snow mountain we would climb all over and act as if we were in a snow land.

Now I live on my own though, and I have a very small private backyard leading out to an old unpredictable forest. Not much to do in it besides lay on a hammock.

GOD SO MUCH NOSTALGIA IN THIS THREAD.
I'm very fortunate to have had the childhood I had. The adventures I had as a child with my imagination is definitely why i'm able to be so creative in what I do today.

 

[-Jared-]

Oh this'll be fun. x3

As a little kid, my favorite part of the backyard was the bushes. See, the backyard is separated into two sections by a wire fence thing, and there are these bushes that have grown all over the fences. The bushes on the left actually had this hollow spot inside and I could crawl in and sit there and read or do whatever. It felt like a little hideaway. It was like, the coolest thing. xD

We also used to have these little red flowers that would crop up every now and then that I swore looked like fire flowers from Super Mario Bros. So I would pick some and go around pretending to shoot fireballs. xD And of course, any feathers from birds became the cape from Super Mario World. :P

Poolwise, I didn't have a big pool, but I would go swimming and just see how long I could stay underwater. :P Or my parents would put a sprinkler on while I was swimming which for some reason was always fun. xD Or one time, they let me take an umbrella out, set up the sprinkler and sit under the umbrella so I wouldn't get wet from the sprinkler. I felt again like I was in a little hideaway, protected from the sprinkler.

Nowadays, the backyard is just a place I mow occasionally and that we use to store firewood. :\ Oh and barbecue. And we have a garden that never gets used. >__>

 

[Jarred0809]

My backyard was a hill that my house was built into. There was a 2-tiered garden thing going down the hill that you could jump down, with old log stairs nest to them. At the bottom, there was a huge tree that always looked like it was about to fall on the house and a door to the basement.

Now it's just a 15X20 foot empty space where my dog takes a crap.

 

[Mr Cat Dog]

My first backyard could have been anything, as I honestly can't remember anything of it. Fortunately, I'm going to cheat and talk about my second one, as I moved house when I was 2-years-old. My friends thought it was fairly big, and I guess it was in comparison to theirs, but I never really saw it as massive. Besides the grassy part, there were two trees of note: one was an apple tree that would produce cooking apples around October time; the other was a fairly substantial tree that was mainly use for climbing, and had a makeshift tire-swing attached to it. 'Twas kinda cool, although it did become home to bees in the summer, which wasn't great. Around the corner from that was a little enclosed area that we ended up gravelling over. When I was younger, it had things light a piddly trampoline with a handle and even a slide, but they fell into disuse when my brother and I got older, and eventually we ended up throwing them away. Now it's all weedy and whatnot.

My current backyard situation is that I don't have one... living on the third floor of a flat means things like gardens/backyards don't really have much use. I have a windowsill, but that's about it!

 

[Kajini]

Old backyard
Huge field with tree that dropped crab apples that attracted these beautiful deer and were fun to throw with what I thought was a big pool and a blueberry bush that everyone would "hide" around while playing hide and seek so they could eat the berries. A small wooden fort that was perfect for acorn wars and jumping off into the snow. A fire pit to waste away summer nights at and woods to explore and have my father tell ghost stories about.

Current backyard.
Dog's **** field and somewhere to check if it's snowing.

 

[Rogue planet]

The only backyard I've ever had was a square patch of concrete. I never had anywhere to "explore" per se. I've always been an indoors person. What I enjoyed exploring was technology, items around the house, electronics, how things work. I was fascinated by the toaster or the radio, more than an insect or plant.

I'm still the same, mostly. I look at things that I used to love, old items, old pieces of technology, electronics, the lifestyle of the 80s and the nostalgia that comes with it; it's all gone now. It's defunct and useless, doesn't give the same feeling. I have a strange feeling, a longing for the past and a hatred for the future. I just try to ignore it, because there's nothing positive from that.

 

[Sammi]

Right now my backyard is like a tiny patch of grass between the house and the parking lot of the apartment complex. It's not really a yard...

Growing up, I had multiple back yards since we moved around so much. However, they were all the same in one way: there were never toys and hardly ever furniture out there. I think at one point we had a basic patio set but it wasn't used too much.

There was only one backyard I really played in, the one in Nebraska. That house was interesting, in that it was built on an incline. The back door was on the second floor. The yard itself was pretty flat and was just grass. A bit beyond that there was a parking lot and a tree I attempted to climb a few times. Nothing too special, but I was still young enough where I enjoyed staying outside exploring, haha. Once I got older, I was less into going outdoors and more about staying inside with TV and video games...

 

[FlamingTorchic]

my backyard had a playground in it and i remember tripping and getting splinters a lot

 

[Beelzebub]

Old backyard was pretty big. It had two sets of swings on opposite sides of the yard but the swings fell off one of the sets so it was really just used for climbing on. There was a really impressive garden, and a huge tree that had a lovely little hammock under it. There was also a small picnic table that I liked to eat lunch on sometimes.

I don't have a backyard anymore. ヽ( ´¬`)ノ

 

[PlatinumDude]

I didn't have much of a backyard during my childhood, but I liked to walk around the neighborhood with my uncle and his dog during the afternoons to see how big the neighborhood was.

 

[Tachikaze]

My backyard at my old house where I was born/grew up was awesome, it was big and we had a tee to climp and play in, as well as a mini-garden, birdbath, flower beds, etc. Usually we just ended up getting dirty. XD

 

[Elite Overlord LeSabre™]

My first backyard wasn't much... slight hill at the edge farthest from the house, a few trees, and a storage shed. And a wood pile for our wood-burning fireplace. Honestly, I didn't spend much time there. Even as a little kid I was much more of an indoors person.

Currently our backyard is mostly pine straw. No joke. My favorite backyard was when it was a parking lot (i.e., my dorm at college).