It is Monday, which means it is time for a fresh Playdate!
Everyone is welcome to link up to this post all week long with your play related posts, pics and ideas!


Last week, reader and blogger 'Chocolate Eyes' joined in with her boys' incredibly imaginative love affair with a set of clothespins ♥.

This past Saturday, my daughter and a friend went outside to play.  As spring begins to tease us with warmer days, my daughter is itching to play outside more often and longer.

Our challenge at home is having the main street and a major highway in front of us (and railway tracks) and a lake behind us, as well as lower rent cottages beside us with a transient summer population~ which does not add up to safe independent play for a young child outdoors in our yard!   Thankfully our Sheltie, Archie, is absolutely devoted to watching 'his girl' and is a brilliant 'alarm barker'~ no one, friend or foe is going to even walk by our house without Archie raising the alarm loud and long.

With a friend to join in, and Archie to mind them, the two girls were given the new opportunity to play outside on their own (with me watching from the back window ;) ).

And they found a climbing tree.

You would have thought they discovered a cure for the common cold. I was that excited.
They spent a (cold!) hour exploring the tree and immersed in play.
I think there is something about climbing a tree that is essential for childhood and good for the soul.

It reminded me of many. many hours spent with my sisters in the big oak tree in my grandfather's front yard.
Up in our shaded bower no one could see us, while we could look down on the world.
The challenge of making our way into the tree was a satisfying stretch of muscle and exertion of will that left us feeling confident and strong. We had started climbing the cherry tree and worked our way up to mastering the oak.
We rigged up ways to eat our lunch in the tree (and we lost a lot of drinks this way!) and put the younger siblings to work fetching us odd assortments of items that we could pull up with our makeshift pulley system.

I can still feel the scrape of bark on skin and the sureness of the thick branches under tanned bare feet.
I think my lifelong love of trees must have began during those summer days.
To see my daughter climb her first tree and hear the eagerness in her voice as she awaits her own long summer days of play filled me with delight!

Tell Us About Your Favourite Tree, or Your Child's Tree Climbing Adventures...

Blog about it, or any other play related topics, photos or ideas and use the link up tool below!  If this is your first playdate at BTRT, follow this link for the button and complete (but simple!) instructions for participation! Don't forget to add the button and link back ♥

Hint: Use the title of your blog post for the 'name' portion of the link up!