Neighbourhood kids playing in our garden!

- a sure way of knowing summer is here...

My wife and I live with our children in a house with a garden about the size of half a soccer field. In our garden, there is a sand box, a trampoline, some swings and a bar for balancing on. We built them all ourselves, except for the trampoline, of course. The sand box is made by putting 10 boards together, 2 on top of each other, so that it forms a pentagon (not the US military thingy, but with the same shape...)

We´ve just removed it, because the kids think they have grown too old for it, so right now it´s been taken apart and is lying in bits and pieces by one of our apple trees.

The trampoline is still in use. We´ve had it for 5 years now and digging it down was a family project then, but I´ll be posting on that some other time.

The swings were a gift from my wife´s brothers and they got it up while we were having a party in the garden 6 years ago.

And then there´s the balancing bar which is something I put up a few years ago for my daughter, who was having some trouble keeping her balance at the time.

Why am I telling you what´s in our garden? Well, this post isn´t really about these things, but more about something that is very important to us as a family. We want to be a hospitable family. We want everyone to know that they are welcome in our house and in our garden. 

One of the first week after we moved in some of the neighbourhood kids were standing by the boarded fence on the one side of our property with their faces firmly against the fence trying to look through the cracks between the boards and when we saw them, we invited them in.

Ever since then, one thing tells us summer is on for sure: all the kids from the neighbour start visiting us in our garden. Sometimes even when we´re not at home ourselves! (That´s okay, too, if it´s okay with their parents...)

And you know what? It´s summer time in our garden!

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