Every year our friends Megan & Matt host a series of Friday night movies in their backyard. It’s a chance for the adults to relax and enjoy a cocktail or two while the kids run around like banshees and play on the playset.

Matt has a great setup for the movies — a sweet computer projector that makes a nice ten plus foot screen. As the night heads toward twilight the kids and adults have had their fill of any number of treats that have been brought for the festivities.

As the sun slowly sets the screen on the side of their house slowly starts to become more and more apparent and the kids know movie time has finally come. We hosted a movie night once at our house to give Matt & Megan a break and while we all had a great time, it just didn’t have that touch of magic that exists in their backyard.

That’s not to say that our yard won’t ever have that magic, but right now its a barren wasteland of grass. Megan & Matt’s yard by comparison has well thought our flower gardens that hold surprises one might not normally expect to see in a typical garden. Its just a fun place to be, centrally located between two other of our friends. A win-win situation really.

So to Megan & Matt if you are reading this — A hearty thank you from us to you! This summer’s movie night was a smashing success, we are looking forward to next year already!

When the cold winds of January blew in a snowy winter wonderland, I cheered for our good fortune to have a Southern facing home. With the trusty TORO snow-blower purring like a cat, I would eat through the snow like it was butter. And as the day would go on, my driveway would dry from the Sun’s glorious rays.

I didn’t expect to find myself cursing the Sun this summer. Keeping my grass in the front from dying has proven to be a monumental task. I should have known it would be like this, our backyard in our old house was always a step away from cactus-ville.

The difference being that I could ignore the backyard if I wanted to, I have to see the front every day. It got even worse when our builder decided to finally level out our front lawn (there was a depression from an incorrectly back-filled sewer line), the already old and close to withering death grass that they put down was barely holding on before we went on vacation to Vermont.

When I saw that we were having 100 degree weather back home, I could just imagine the straw I would be coming home to. Yeah, it did turn out to be pretty brutal, I have two nice large dead sections. That phone call should be fun to the builder.

So now we are attempting to bring our lawn back from the dead, watering morning and night every other day. Walking out in the morning to turn on the sprinklers, getting my feet wet on dew, and invariably getting a shot from the sprinkler.. really makes me jealous of people with sprinkler systems — Lucky bastards!

The day started overcast, the forecast for the day predicted it to be a cloudy day that would reach the low eighties. All in all, a perfect day to hit the zoo. Off we went for Brookfield Zoo here in Chicago to meet friends from a local China adoption group we belong to.

We get together fairly often, it helps ease the crushing frustration from this long and drawn out wait for our daughter’s referral. Seeing the kids and talking with others does have a calming effect — that from someone who never really bought into that sort of thing.

It helps too that they are all really cool and fun to be around. So off we went merrily on our way, a pack of couples and children, strollers and cameras to see the animals on display.

The attraction of the day was a baby polar bear, but he was inside both times we wandered past his area. By late in the day I was wishing that I was inside, the sun had burned away the cloud and it felt more like ninety.

The cicadas were fun breaks from the heat, every now and than a woman or child would scream as one felt onto them or into their hair. I offered money to a few people to eat one, but nobody took me up on the offer.

Luckily nobody counter bet me to eat one. I would have done it if push came to shove (at least that’s what I am saying right now in the comfort of my home… ), but it never came to that thankfully.

I don’t know what it is about the zoo but every time I visit it I leave feeling beat to hell, my legs hurt my joints ache and I really don’t know why. Sure we walked around, but nothing intense or even hilly for that matter. It has to be just the result of walking + sun + energy sapping nature of keeping an eye on your kid. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll get to experience the zoo on a Segway or even a Rascal (I’ll never forget that Seinfeld episode!).

The other thing that I seem to feel more as I get older is a sadness from looking at the animals. I am sure that the staff/management takes care of them like they were their own children, and the facilities are pretty impressive to see — but I just can’t shake the feeling that they would be better off in the wild.

I think by putting them in zoo’s we forget about their wild nature, we start to relate to them almost on a pet level and we not only lose an appreciation for their wild nature, but they loose their surface level natural instincts.

Its still there, but it takes more to bring it out than it would in the wild. Why can’t we take a page from some of the rain forest tours I have seen and suspend sully enclosed walkways thirty feet off the ground that extend across large unfettered and unrestricted tracts of land that have been transformed to be say a savanna in Africa?

It just seems like it might be a more natural way to see nature like it is in the wild. I think that might be why I enjoy our local arboretum the Morton Arboretum. Its over 1200 acres of forests, plains, wetlands, etc.

When I go there and walk around its almost like the weight of the world comes off my shoulders, the burdens of life melt away and I can enjoy just being out in nature. Its a pretty amazing place that I am so glad to have finally visited after so many years.