The Story of My Life Part 5: Treehouses, Gardens, Ponds and Cornfields

I don't remember if we mentioned it to Dad just once or maybe it was a million times, but at some point in our young lives my sister and I told him we'd like a treehouse. So what does good ol' dad do? He builds us one of course! My dad is the sort of person who once he decides to do something he doesn't wait around, he does it NOW and doesn't stop till it's done. Thus it was with said treehouse. He chopped down the trees, laid the planks, got the ladder up and everything in what pretty much felt like one day. We lived on an acre of land and we had 2 small forests right behind our house each going down the same hill. A big swath of grass divided them (I think the bare spot was there just so we had something to sled down in the winter). The forest he built the treehouse in was considered the "tame" forest. You could actually walk through it, the other one was too wild and you had to climb over tons of underbrush to get through it. Anyways, the treehouse was right at the beginning of the tame forest and my sister and I played in it for hours. We always dreamt of upgrading it--give it things like a roof, more rooms ect. but I thought we were pretty lucky to have one at all. Most kids only dream of having a treehouse, but we actually had one! I remember Jenn loved to climb trees, but I didn't so I'd always use the ladder to get down, but Jenn would liked to grab onto the nearest tree and climb down. She's such a daredevil!!
My dad is the most enthusiastic gardener I know. And having an acre of land to tinker with meant he put as much of it as he could to good use. We had every kind of fruit tree imaginable, and a gigantic vegetable garden. Every year Dad would expand the garden somehow so we even had flower gardens with brick paths through them and everything. Thinking about how much work that all must been, I wish I would have inherited Dad's energy!
When I was really young, we had a big pool in the yard. But Dad got tired of maintaining it, so one summer he took it out and what remained was a huge mud hole. One day my sister Jenn, my foster sister Crystal and I decided it would be fun to jump in it. Of course, it turned into a big mud wrestling match and I still remeber trying to climb out of that mud pit and just being covered, head to toe, in mud. It disgusts me to think of it now, but back then, that was called some good country fun! Eventually, the mud hole grew some cattails, got some frogs in it and became a regular looking pond. I remember catching tadpoles and frogs for hours, but I never went "swimming" in it again!
We lived by a lot of farms, so there were tons of cornfields to go exploring in. I remember one time, walking through one to this little island of land that had a small forest in it and in that forest were a couple of graves. Yet, what really scared me away from cornfields? Not graves, but E.T. Yep, pretty much after that movie I wouldn't go near a cornfield for a very long time. And I still look behind the shower curtain when I go to the bathroom to make sure he's not there either. Ok, just kidding about that last part, really...