My dad’s house has a massive and very flat back yard. I was never a “Hey, let’s go play outside with the hot and the bugs and the dirt” kind of kid. But in retrospect, I wish I’d taken more advantage of the yard. It’s a great yard.

I’d always envisioned my own kids playing in a similar space. The house we’re renting* now doesn’t really have any playable yard space to speak of, though. The front “yard” is taken up mostly by a gravel driveway. The back has a good amount of space, but I’d have to give the kids climbing gear to play on it. It’s pretty steep, is what I’m saying. I’m of the opinion that we don’t need quite as much driveway as we have and that if we could reclaim some of that space as yard, it would give the kids a place to play.

And so, I have made a little diagram and I would like your opinion.** I’m not sure how you’d go about shrinking a driveway, but I’d imagine it would take a good bit of manual labor to remove the gravel. And then you’d have to put down grass seed or sod, I think, unless you wanted to give the kids a mud pit. Which I don’t want to do.

What do you think? Would this be possible? Or affordable? I don’t know how many landscaping experts are stopping by here these days, but I’d appreciate any input you may have.

*And yes, we’re renting. So this might all be hypothetical talk, depending on our landlord’s opinion on the topic.

**Said diagram was lost in a tragic domain transfer accident. Terribly sad. It was a doozy of a diagram.

My computer has been randomly powering off for the last … oh, several months now. It’s been doing it more and more frequently the last few weeks. It did it again this morning, and my efforts to revive it haven’t yielded anything. I’m hoping it just needs a new battery. I’m going to try to order one later this week. I’ll be able to check email and maybe update here when Rockford is home and not using his work computer. Other than that, though, it looks like I’ll be unplugged. (I’m getting twitchy just thinking about it.)