1950’s summers now seem long hot
sunny blue skied as our garden
surged into rampant jungle growth.
On Saturdays Dad’s elderly lawn
mower roared forth scything
before him thick grass except alas
for that Australian invader’s
tall seed heads – paspalum grass.
Those wiry stalks gouged deeply
into the sides of our hands as we
picked them by hand across our
seemingly endless lawns as our
acking backs stayed bent for the
monster emerging from our garage.
Oh the relief when a young
efficient mower arrived.
The ancient Christmas plum tree
waited for the summer school
holidays then daily dropped a
deluge of tiny scarlet fruit with
enormous stones for six weeks.
A cloud of stones ricocheted
from the mower’s blades round
the back garden so we three had
to gather up the stinking sticky
mass of rotting plums with stones
into brother’s trolley remove it
to the hen yard, scrub out
brother’s trolley …… Yurk !
Thankfully the old tree’s crop
gradually diminished over time.
Previously posted May 2018.
lifecameos 
We had a plum tree in our yard growing up. My brother and I would have plum wars and pelt each other with gushy rotten plums when they would start to go bad!
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Yerk !! I am glad we did not get on to that ! It was just so gross picking up all the squishy rotten plums off the grass.
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Eh, we were young and had nothing better to do. Not like kids today. I doubt they ever play in their yards anymore. It was all we had.
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They need a backyard to play in first, a lot of them don’t have that these days. My nephew’s children do have one, and play outside. But they would be quite lucky.
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That’s true!
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