"My Mud Sculpture Memories"

                                                     

                                

                      "MY MUD SCULPTURE MEMORIES"

(From writing prompt: "Why are you keeping it? Tell the story of a keepsake you own that can not tell it's own story.)

   They sit atop the shelf in the outdoor room.

   A cup, a snowman, a glob. All made from mud, hardened throughout the years.

   I can't bear to throw them away. They hold the last wonderful memories of the fun we had in the garden, my grandkids and me; the fun we had making mud pies, birthday cakes, forts and dinosaur caves; archaeological digs, and volcanoes.

   Year after year, Fox, Terra and Dalila and I would sit in the garden during spring and summer, mixing and pouring, sculpting and digging, laughing and singing, creating, and distroying. We would make mud into everything and anything.

   It started with my 3 year old grandson, Fox, pouring water in a dug out hole from newly tilled garden soil. We created a lake. The mound that he had dug out from the hole would become Mt. St. Helens in Fox's creative and imaginative mind. Fox then filled the dug hole with water. Dubbing it "Spirit Lake", he then slid from the top of Mt. St. Helens right into Spirit Lake, calling it the 'mud slide'. But it didn't stop there. Fox, at the wee age of 4-6 would slide down the mountain into the lake and call himself 'Mud Boy'. He had so much fun, not even caring that he would be needing a good scrubbing later.

   Treasure hunts were created, too, by hiding things in a mud pit. One of us would hide plastic dinosaurs, fake pirate jewels, green plastic soldiers and other little treasures. The other one would dig to find them all.

   Dinosaur scenes were created by sculpting hills and valleys and placing the dinosaurs 'just so'. Even dinosaur houses were built...a fort like structure to keep 'good' dinosuars safe from the 'bad' ones.

  One year when Fox was very little (maybe 3 or 4 years old), Fox's father came to pick him up. Fox would be in the garden among the corn stalks and pumplin vines. I'll never forget how Fox would find little niches and forts within the corn and pumpkins to hid in. There, he thought he could hide from Daddy, although he was in plain sight.

   Terra and Dalila, my younger grandkids, came along as they got older to join in the mud-fun.

   We began to create 'food' for Cinammon, our dog. Mostly daisy decorated cakes with stick candles on top were fashioned with special 'mud' ingredients. We always hid a real dog bone inside to keep Cinammon always interested in her cake. She would then 'dig into' her cake to find her treat, which the girls loved. "Cinammon loves her birthday cake!" they would squeel!

   Terra would get into the 'Mud Boy' fun, as Fox had in the past. (Dalila had, by then, moved to England to be with Daddy) Now both Fox and Terra, in our last-of-the-garden-days, would fill holes with water. They would then roll, slide or splash their way into a mud covered frenzy. (Grandma/Umma got alot of back-lash) They didn't care that Umma had to spray them with the cold hose to get most the mud off of them before they could come inside for a bath.

    The days of the 'ducks' came in the last of those garden days. Holes were now dug and filled with water for other uses...the ducks! "Rover" and "Twink" (short for "Twinkle-Twinkle-Little-Star", Terra's duck) would be 'placed' into the holes to see if they would swim or try to climb out. The deeper the hole, the harder it was for them to get out and they they would have to swim. That was great fun for the grandkids to watch. Many hours were spent in the garden with those two play-mates, Rover and Twink.

   The last year of the garden, we planted sunflowers into a 'house' shape. When the flowers grew up tall, they would be the walls of a house. Terra loved this flower-house and would spend much time inside with her books and weebles.

      The grandkids got older. Neighbors moved in behind our garden-play-land, leaving us without privacy. I got tired of the muddy mess, and the kids didn't care for it by now, either. Memories of spraying with cold hoses, Piggy-back rides into the bathroom to prevent mud soaked floors, and a mud splashed bathtub, stopped appealing to me, along with load after load of mud soaked laundry.

   The garden bacame more of a chore than a fun hobby. The tiller was sold, the garden covered with ground paper. and grape, blueberry and raspberry plants were planted, replacing mud pits, Spirit Lakes, Mt. St. Helens and dinosaur digs. 

   No more mud; no more garden. The garden years were over.

   But the memories live on in my mind.

   The proof of my memories are in the mud sculptures that I still cherish; the mud memories I'll always treasure! A carefree, fun-loving time of youth and imagination! They live on in my mind, heart and my mud sculptures!