Backyard by Norman Draper Page A

backyard. They sank more than $30,000 into scores of garden center purchases and in building their arbor in the back, the arched trellises, and an intricately set boulder wall, which they had later taken down, redistributing the boulders in various combinations around the yard.
    They weeded, planted, watered, and fertilized. Once the children had grown into teenagers, they were able to take the tire swing down from the ash tree, and the big, bare, trampled-on spot underneath it was now trying hard to grow fescue and Kentucky bluegrass for the fourth time, with mixed results. Other than that, the backyard had made the transition from jangling, unkempt juvenile playground to restful adult Zen garden.
    Mostly, they had been in accord as to how their backyard would look. Apart from the hideous compost compound, there was one jarring note for Nan. That was the five-foot-high wood carving of Miguel de Cervantes, whose Don Quixote was a hero of George’s, because, Nan figured, they were both such a mass of stupid delusions and strange heroic notions all endearingly mixed in with each other. They had paid an artist $2,500 against Nan’s better judgment to carve that figure into the stump of the silver maple they had had to cut down because its roots had been coiled around it when it was planted, slowly strangling the tree. The carving had been fashioned with a chain saw, chisels, and awls, sanded lightly, and painted in lifelike colors, which were fading now. The entire bloody thing was a constant irritant to Nan, who considered it gauche and stupid. She just couldn’t get the juxtaposition of something literary and symbolic and the Vermont Castings gas grill. She was also tired of explaining to visitors who it was and why it was there, which she didn’t fully understand herself.
    â€œNo more compromises,” she had said once she beheld the finished product, firmly convinced of her own superiority in the realm of backyard conceptualizing and design.
    She sighed resignedly as she glanced at Miguel de Cervantes’s trim and spike-bearded form, with a quill pen in one hand and large book in the other, and his weird painted eyes, which always seemed to be looking at her. The good thing was that no further compromises had been necessary.
    The backyard was a seasonal thing; the winters in this particular part of the upper Midwest being far too frightful to allow any consideration of spending much time outdoors unless you did something silly, such as skiing or ice-skating. Once the mercury started regularly topping out at forty, George made a big to-do of putting on his sunglasses, shorts, green-and-gray Muskies home ball cap, Jethro Tull T-shirt, and flip-flops, mixing himself a gin and tonic, then heading out to the back patio to officially inaugurate the new season. That usually happened in early-to-mid-March. It was about the same time that Bluegill Pond thawed enough to film over with glistening water and sprout the C AUTION : T HIN I CE signs planted in its shallows.
    The backyard flourished as human habitat from mid-April to early November, by which time the temperature had plunged, the light had gone, and all the summer life had had its fall color fling and been gathered up for compost.
    Nan and George figured November 14 to be the average date they retreated to the hibernating shelter of a spacious house and on that last day, they’d give the backyard a wake, sprinkling a small pile of leaves and withered plant detritus with their remaining gin and lighter fluid, then burning it at dusk, each reciting a few thoughts concerning the highlights of the season just past and a prayer praising God’s goodness for providing them with such an earthly bounty. Then, they’d go inside and prepare for the winter by knocking down a couple of shots of the drink they adopted for the long, dark season ahead: Glenlivet single malt Scotch.
    The Fremonts had taken no vacations of any particular note for the last four