This was my backyard

...and I say it always will be. It is part of the park system. Before we lived there a lady with the last name Mills was on the land. Prior to that, it was owned by the Battles family.
It had several buildings: our house, this horsebarn, a chicken coop, a deluxe outhouse, a shed, a pigsty and another shed way in the back. There were fields of daffodils, apple trees, plum trees, pears, blackberries, black raspberries, a natural spring, several waterfalls, deer, pheasant, quail, hawks, owls, geese, ducks, beaver, groundhogs, chipmunks, racoons and more. One year the ranger stopped by and gave us a baby racoon. Someone found the babies in the middle of a mall parking lot, and assumed their parent was killed. They delivered them to the park naturalists. We helped raise "Toony" and kept him in a rabbit cage in back of the house. As he got a little bigger, we simply left the cage open and Toony would climb trees and make some trips out to the woods. It was always cool to wake up and walk outside and look up in the huge maple and see his little pointy face sticking out from behind a Y in the tree. After awhile, we did not see him much, but we knew when it was him if he stopped by. He eventually got hit by a car after a couple years. It was a terrible first experience with death for a young teen. I always think of heaven as a place where I never have to worry about such things. I wish we could all just ride horses or walk and keep life more simple.
Anyhow, it was still a fantastic place to grow up after living my first 8 years on the West Side. Of course, I loved that, too, but that is for another post.