Brass bliss

I came home on the Friday evening before the Fourth of July to find this thrilling sight—yes, in my back yard. (Or, strictly observing the metes and bounds of our property's legal description, just in back of our back yard.) The high school stadium down the street was the site that night of a drum and bugle corps competition. The groups participating staked out practice areas here and there amidst the soccer and baseball fields behind our house, and worked on their drum routines and their brass band scales and chord progressions, each group's routines randomly overlapping with another's to marvelous effect. One of the brass bands worked on a snippet of the music that it was preparing to perform, which for all the world could just as well have been the theme song to any Quinn Martin Production from the '70s. It made me smile. I asked my husband, "Isn't anyone going to do 'Crazy Train'?"

I couldn't help gawking at the band pictured above throughout their entire practice. I loved how they looked—their parabolic formation in sleeveless black uniforms, juxtaposed against the silver brass of their instruments—and loved hearing the sounds of brass, en masse, so close. Finally, it was their turn to head to the stadium, and so the players attached their sleeves (one black, one white) to their uniforms, donned their hats, and moved on. Some time afterward, only one band remained, practicing on a baseball field in the distance—a group in dark-sleeved cream-colored uniforms reminiscent of an old-fashioned baseball team. As dusk approached, they played the opening strains of "Ol' Man River".

After an experience like that, it's not hard to suss out what you do want—which is, to watch your new DVD of "The Music Man." And so we did.

Comments

[Kathy]

You're not kidding in your backyard. When I click on the photo to get the larger one, I can see the flowers from your garden well enough to identify them! Do you have any trouble with students trampling plants or tossing trash in your backyard?

[Chan S.]

Other than the stray soccer ball, we haven't had problems with folks walking on or through the garden (I think it's because visually the boundary is very clear--a row of daffodils in the spring, and now daylilies, and eventually a screen of ornamental grass between the daylilies and the perennial border proper, which will probably take a couple of years to fill in). The open space actually has the effect of discouraging a lot of littering--it was a different story before we got rid of the hedge of barberries there, which collected massive amounts of trash (some blown in, some thrown in).

[bill]

We also have a soccer and a baseball field directly behind our back yard, actually a small park adjacent to an elementary school.

We are not quite as willing to open our backyard up to it though. We have one of those high wooden fences - which ordinarily I don't like - across the back, plus a twenty foot wall of juniper and cherry laurel foliage. In other words you can't see in or out.

[Chan S.]

A number of our neighbors have also gone the high fence route, but for now (while our three kids are young), we like being able to see them run and play as if the fields were an extension of their own back yard.