Leaf Houses

The swishing of leaves under my feet made my thoughts go back in time recently, all the way back to elementary school when I was about seven or eight years old and the big playground at our old Lyons School held all of the mystery and allure a child could imagine.  The school was perched on a bit of a hill and the playground, vast as it was, included a large field for exercise and play, a playground with myriad equipment and a hill that was perfect for sledding.  In the fall, my little-girl friends and I would build leaf houses on the playground.  The houses were more like architectural layouts of long, low mounds of dried leaves to form the "walls" of the various rooms of our pretend homes.  A good gust of wind would take our home creations away, but a little ingenuity would pull them back together again.  I think of how simple play was in those days.  There were no hand-held devices or scheduled, organized playtimes.  Instead, we used our imaginations and very little else to create hours of fun, like building our own leaf dream houses that tomorrow would blow away.