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Ever since I was a little kid, all sorts of creatures would go to my mother's garden; birds, butterflies, lizards, even skunks and moles and gophers were attracted to the vegetables she grew.
I remember spending summer days staring out the window at my mother's flowers, and seeing a hummingbird. Oh, I would be so excited to see one; and everytime I saw one my love for nature regrew.

I have many memories there, where the dirt mound sloped up towards the brick wall. I remember we used to have a countinuous hill of dirt that went up from the sides of our grass to that wall. Before we put up a brick wall to separate that dirt from the grass, I would climb up that hill and sit on that dirt against the wall, and watch the birds pass by above me in the trees, chirping, always chirping, and busy building their nests.

I remember once, we found a birdnest on top of our basketball hoop, where the cement lay un-beaten since we were too small to bounce balls. I remember my father had to take it down. I remember looking into that small nest and seeing eggs. three perfectly small eggs in the middle of entwined twigs and twine. We left it outside for the parents to come back, or at least my father said. I sat outside and waited. A day passed and I gave up. The parents didn't come back, and though I cried for those unborn birds, I knew I couldn't do anything about it.

We used to have six trees in our backyard, and pretty big ones at that. I remember one of the trees had the most beautiful leaves. I spent many fall days picking up the pretties leaves and trying to "press" them. I'd put them in the middle of a dictionary and stack our heaviest books on top: Our other dictionaries, our children's fables and little bibles and textbooks, then sit on them. I'd sit and think and wonder about things. We cut down a few trees.
I don't do that anymore.

Underneath those trees I always would sit down in the grass and look up at the sky. I remember every single birthday party we had, we had a "jumper" and I would sit in the middle before any of the guests would come at noon and look up at the shadows of the leaves against the ceiling and breathe deeply. and since we had four children in the family with birthdays during summer, this came four times a year.
That also doesn't happen anymore.

I would also spend my summers in the garden, watering my mothers flowers with her water pail and wear my bathing suit when I was around 4. Back then I used to think that flowers drank water through their center, and not through their roots. it would really confuse me, but i followed what my mother said when she told me to put the water in the dirt. I remember I always tried to grow my own flower, I would snap off a flower and put it in dirt.
I miss those days.