And so, in the game Cadie started out in the living room. Deirdre was her “GPS”, you could say, and um well Cadie wanted to go outside. And Cadie went outside, and found herself on the lawn! Great! Now what! And so I told her–ahem, the GPS told her–that she could go to Old Man’s Cave, or into to the forest, or-or-I forget where. Anyway, Cadie said she wanted to just start walking and see where she’d end up. And so Cadie walked to the creek. And she crossed the creek. (You can imagine how hard this was for her GPS Etch-a-Sketch to draw!) Then she came to a woods. And she got some acorns and some other nuts, and she also tamed a little duck from breadcrumbs in her pocket.

And Cadie decided to keep going and the GPS drew out another landscape on the GPS’s Etch-a-Sketch, and… where was I? Cadie came out of the clearing in the woods, and she saw big mountains! So she climbed the moutains, because there was nothing better to do. Huff, huff, huff,  huff-huff-huff–poor ducky, who was flying all that way. And so then she came to a cave. And she went inside of the cave and she saw a mother wolf and her baby wolves! And Cadie wasn’t sure if she wanted to tame them or what, and so she kind of wanted to leave, but her GPS kind of “hint-hint-hinted” that there was some bones on the other side, and she should kind of maybe take the bones and tame the wolves with them, so Cadie was forced to do that–because GPS’s know everything! And so Cadie couldn’t tame them right away, so the GPS made Cadie tie one of the bones to the back of her shirt, so the wolves would keep following her as they were tamed. Cadie wasn’t quite comfortable with that; she thought it would be egging the wolves on to eat her.

Cadie kept climbing up the mountain, because there was nothing better to do! And she climbed and she climbed and came to the top of the mountain, which was kind of flat (mountains always just look so pointed from a distance, really they’re not all that pointed. Not that I’ve ever climbed a mountain myself, before, of course! I’m just guessing. Actually, the GPS is just guessing.) Cadie said she would put down a flag upon the top of the moutain, but actually she probably couldn’t do that because she didn’t have a flag, but the GPS said “Nonsense! You can do whatever you want in this game!”, so Cadie put down a flag on the top of the mountain.

Cadie saw a flock of birds flying by, and she still had some bread crumbs leftover, but the GPS also hinted that you can tame animals with animals, so Cadie tried to tame the flock of birds with all her animals, but the wolves couldn’t so just the duck did. So Cadie got a whole flock of birds, but she didn’t want a whole flock of birds, so she said “Can I just take a couple out of the flock of birds?” And the whole flock shook their heads and said “Mm-mm!” And then she asked the whole flock of birds to take her somewhere new, where she’d never been before. So the wolves clambered up on top of Cadie, and the whole flock of birds took Cadie by the string that was attached to the bone, and they flew her off to the mushroom hut!

And so Cadie went inside the mushroom hut with all her pets. So Cadie went inside, and there was an old lady there by the table. And she spoke in a creaky, cackly voice and had a cackly laugh. She said “Won’t you have tea over a nice, long discussion?” after giving Cadie some pet medicine and human medicine. Cadie heard a huge “Foosh!” and crackling noise and whistling. Because the little old lady made a big burst of fire, and it was so hot it made the tea kettle whistle right away. She asked Cadie how she got there and Cadie said, “I asked my birds to bring me somewhere new.” The little old lady leaned over and petted the bird under the chin, and said, “Well, YOU must be strong, huh!” and the bird chirped, and she said “Oh, it was the whole flock of you, huh?”

And so after a while of the GPS trying to think up what the old lady would say, Cadie decided she would leave. But when she left, the old lady called out, “Wait! Want me to cast a spell over you?” and Cadie said, “Umm… no thanks.” And then the witch said, “It can be a healing spell! Do you want to learn how to make a healing spell?” And then Cadie  still said no thanks. And then the old witch offered Cadie some healing potions, and Cadie accepted and asked what they were for, humans or animals, and the old witch said “Both! Everything. Even plants!”

Then Cadie left and as she was the leaving, the old witch was shrieking, “Wait! Wait! There’s more! Don’t you want to do something!” The poor old witch wanted Cadie to stay, but she didn’t want to.

Cadie kept going and wondering where she was (the GPS knew where she was, but… she didn’t think of asking the GPS!) and so she came to a hut with a straw roof, and she knocked on the door and asked if they knew where she was. The guy responded, “I don’t know. We’re the Lost Brothers. This is the Lost Brother’s home!” and he started arguing with another brother about where they were, or if they were in the land of the lost people , and etc. and etc. But Cadie wasn’t really paying attention to the narrator anymore, so she kind of just said “Ah” and kept staring off into the distance.

But anyway then she asked the birds to take her closer to home, or maybe the birds didn’t know where she lived so closer to the mountain. And the birds dropped her right on top of the windvane on top of her house! And she cried out “Ow!” because there was some pokey things sticking up. And Cadie wasn’t really paying attention anymore, so the narrator made her slide off the roof of her porch.  And so Cadie climbed off the roof of her porch and onto her actual porch, and there was some sort of hanging flower things and maybe some lamps, but Deirdre was getting kind of tired, so that was basically the last drawing she did, except for drawings some pies (square pies) later on.

So Cadie went into her kitchen, and there was the smell of bacon. All of her wolves started yapping and yowling, and they wanted some bacon too (by this time they were already tame, of course, I forgot to mention that earlier on.) And so Cadie ate the bacon, and saved some for the wolves too, because they were disappointed. Cadie saw the birds pecking at the starch container, so she filled up bird feeders with bird seed, and as soon as she filled it up, all the bird seed was gone because the birds were hungry! Then Cadie wanted to go exploring more, so she went outside to Old Man’s Cave, because Deirdre was insisting.

So the wolves bounded ahead of Cadie, and Cadie heard “Help! Help! Wolf attack!” And Cadie came inside and saw him standing up on a really tall chair on one leg, waving his hands about. And Cadie said, “Don’t worry, they’re tame!” and the old man fell off onto a wolf. And Cadie said, “See, they even let you ride them!” The wolves were kind of disagreeing, but they let the old man ride them, and the old man rode around the cave shouting “Whoopee!” and after a while he said, “Wouldn’t you like an apple  pie?” to Cadie, and she said sure, and he threw an apple pie onto her off the counter. But the birds caught it just in time and put it down onto the table. And then he threw a chocolate cream pie at her, and that hit her right in the face. And Cadie said “Aww,” but the wolves cleaned it off. Then he gave Cadie another one just to get the guilty conscience off him. And then he led Cadie into the playroom by the arm, and then there was a big big food fight, and Cadie won. And the GPS told Cadie jokingly that the old man must’ve been dropped on his head when he was a baby.

And (this is where the picture of the two pies comes in), in real life Cadie kind of stopped playing the game, and she finished sending a recipe to the Gaige’s. Then she went over and helped Caleb with something, and then she wrote on the Etch-a-Sketch, “Deirdre, I have to do dishes. WAAAA” And that was so heart-rending that Deirdre was persuaded to dry some of the dishes for her. And that’s THE END!

One night while Caleb and Owen were  sleeping, some goblins sneaked into the dark dungeon ‘s cave and grabbed Deirdre and sneaked away. When Caleb and Owen woke up, they forgot about Dierdre because they heard noises outside the cave. They poked there heads out of the cave and saw two orcs talking to each other. So they both picked up a rock each, and knocked the orcs out with them, and stabbed them dead with there own weapons. Then they set off to look for Deidre. As They went along, They saw a house that had a sign near it that said ‘Eat free candy Here and sometimes gain powers.’ So they went up to the candy shop and knocked on the door. A little rabbit poked his head out the window and asked them what kind of candy they wanted. (Caleb and Owen were very young, so a talking rabbit didn’t seem strange to them.)Owen said, “We don’t want any candy, little rabbit. (witch was not quite true) “We just want to find our sister Dierdre.” The little rabbit, seeming to know a lot, replied, “You won’t find Deirdre, she will just turn up sometime. One thing you should know, my boy, is that not all goblins are bad.”

“So  what?  We’re going home!” said Owen and he started to walk away. “You don’t have a home!” the little rabbit yelled after them. “So what, we’ll build one!” Owen yelled back. And the next day they set out in search for something to cut trees down with. While the were walking along, they came to the town the orcs chased them out of. The only building that was left standing was a tavern, witch the orcs didn’t want to destroy because it had lots of food in it. So Owen and Caleb Walked right in and made themselves at home.

Maybe even a year later, Owen and Caleb decided to go out and fight the orcs. They had found some weapons lying around the tavern, and they set off in the direction of spider mountain. While they were walking along, Some goblins jumped out of the trees and started whacking Owen and Caleb on the feet with there hammers (The Goblins that we made are very small.)

Episode 1 Once upon a time there where two little boys named Owen and Caleb. Owen was the eldest, and Caleb was the younger of the two.  Owen was quite strong especially for only the age of six. He could out wrestle any little boy in the town. Caleb was quite intelligent for the age of 3 and he was really interested in his dads job as a black smith. Their mother was a Spell caster and she was about to have another baby when the orcs ( who had been conquering the humans) made a full fledge attack at the town (witch was known for its mighty warriors.) Their dad went to A different town for help, but on the way he got gobbled up by an enferned scroy hardhead. Typical. (scroy hardheads are nice, smart beasts. They are the size of an average room, they are smarter than humans. They only eat kodo beasts unless they are enferned. Enferning is what things called fernys do to most animals (fernys are orcish like creatures that come back to life when they die.) Enferning makes the victim nasty, evil, reckless, rash, extra big, and pretty much insane.)

Then their mother had her baby just as the orcs broke the towns’ barricades. Once She healed herself, she gave her spell book and her baby (Dierdre) to Owen and Caleb and told them to run to the nearest cave. Little Owen and Caleb scurried out their secret passage that led to the base of eye patch Mountain, and then they went into a cave. That cave happened to be populated by (Mischief  making)  Dark dungeons. Dark dungeons, as I called them when I was about six, are large, furry, eight-foot tall human shaped beasts. And ‘Mischief’ making ones are ones that ran away from there kingdom when they were babies. And as I was saying, Owen and Caleb entered the cave, put Deirdre down on a pile of clothes and fell asleep (for they were quite tired, being little kids.)

And then, in the middle of the night, a dark dungeon tip-toed out of the darkness and placed a huge bag of meat, bread, cheese, and a glob of mushed up mix of them all for Deirdre beside Owen. When They woke up, they thought the food was food there mom packed for them. So they gobbled down the food not in the least bit disturbed. The End! (of Episode 1)

Don’t worry! That was only Episode 1 of book 1. Later it gets more interesting.

One day, me and Owen were washing dishes and bored. And we started thinking up technology things. First, I said, “Why is there the sprayer? Why don’t you just use the faucet to rinse?” And Owen said, “The sprayer is for, is like a longer faucet” and he demonstrated for me, if a pot was on a chair next to you—because it couldn’t fit on your counter—you could use a sprayer to fill it up and soak it. And then I started thinking about an extendable faucet. Then Owen started thinking about a car with jet-packs under it, so it could fly over lakes, and there could be roads going straight into lakes. And I thought of invisible glass bridges that when you stepped on them they transported you to the other side. Now I’ll just start talking about some other inventions, because I’m losing track of which order we thought them up in.

There was also an automatic greenhouse, we called it—you just needed to set a time of day and set dials and tell the machine if you wanted some things or not. And then in would automatically, if you told it that you wanted it, give your plants some plant food and water it at a set time of time. Owen also made up a freezer, that you put something like, for example, pie filling into it, and you hear it powering up very loud, and then it conveyor-belts it out, completely frozen. I made up an oven, that cook things in 2 seconds. So you set the dial of how hot you want to cook it, and you can just put a slab of defrosted meat in without any dish, and then like I said, set it to how hot you want it to be, get your hot mitts, and then when you turn back, it’s already done cooking. If you’re not fast enough to get your hot mitts it just goes “Ding!” when it’s done. And it automatically puts dishes under it, because it has dishes stored in the back, so you have to re-fill it sometimes.

Well, there was also just one that everyone makes up, which was a jetpack that goes on yourself, so if you’re taking walks on the road, and you reach a lake that the road goes into, you can just jet-pack over it like the cars would. There was another one which was an air vent that was strong enough to blow a person like, 90 feet in the air. And then you’d put a trampoline under it, and then you’d turn it on and then it would slowly be powering up. So you’d jump on the trampoline, and the trampoline would bounce you up, and then when you were falling down the other thing wouldn’t be all the powered up so it wouldn’t be strong enough to keep you from falling down, and then you’d hit the trampoline (which was above it), and it’d blow you so you’d bounce extra high, about 100 feet up.

(Dictated to Cadie by Caleb, age 7)

I (Farmer Justin) was doing school on the porch and Owen ( A Farmer ) told me that he had made a good pen, and wanted me to be a animal in it. I said “No, I have to do school,” and went in just as Evan ( A Hen ) and Caleb (A ” baby cow”) decided to be animals . I put my school book down and decided to go be an animal. I got there and Evan asked where Owen would milk a cow. Owen made up a place that Evan though was silly so Owen said, “Fine, you be the trainer.” Evan said no, he didn’t want to be the trainer, just like me, so Owen started to walk away saying, “All that hard work making a pen”. Me and Evan laughed, and Evan said making a good game is hard. I said “All right, I guess I will.” Owen whipped around and clapped his hands and grinned.

Later on, I asked Caleb what animal he was; Deirdre interrupted, “I am a baby pig!!!” and then Caleb answered me, “A baby cow”. Then I asked Owen, who said “I’m a horse”. Next I asked Evan, who replied, “What do you want?” (meaning “What do you want me to be?”) I said a hen, so hen it was. I was planning on training them to be in the fair; Deirdre to be really fat, Evan to have a really good egg, Caleb to run really fast, and Owen to be really obedient.I didn’t think Deirdre was playing before, but a pig was good! Just then Lachlan yelled, “OWEN YOU NEED TO CLEAR!!” (Meaning, his job of clearing after lunch.) “Awwww” came from Owen but he went in.

I got hay for my hen–that is, Evan–to make a nest, and then got food for my hen (sand from the sand box, with big round rocks, which I told my hen to lay after she ate them and–WOW! She understood!) Then I got fresh grass for my calf or “baby cow”. After that I got food for the pig (I think I gave her pig-weed from near the barn). Seeing Collin, Evan, and mine’s teepee, I snatched it up and said, “This is a place to sleep or get shade. Deir–pig, eat more so we can make you fat, Deirdre, all you heard is eat, ok?” (Because I didn’t want her to hear that I was fattening her up.) WOW!! My pig said “OK!” And WWWOOOOWWW!! She also said, “Justy, I borndid (gave birth to) a daddy and a boy!!” Man, for a baby pig that’s good! My hen (Evan) said,” Deirrrrddddrrrreeeeee, you’re still a baby!” I think I fainted because of all these unusual things. (In case you were wondering, I didn’t really).

Where was I? Ah, yes, my hen talking, and my pig “borndid” a daddy and a boy! Well, we decided to undo borndiding a daddy and a boy.

I said it was night-time, so the baby cow and pig crammed in the teepee and the hen roosted. I slept in the pen with one eye open so I could see the hen lay eggs, which she did. Next “morning” I went straight to the nest and stole it and I fainted again (in case you were wondering I didn’t really) because the baby cow and pig grew up in one night! I just pretended they did to make the game go along faster. The hen ran away because he was so mad at me for “stealing” his eggs.

Well, the cow could run so fast that he knocked me down, and the pig was so fat, that we decided it was time to go to the fair. No one was looking so I ran inside and switched the rock egg for a Play food one. The horse (Owen) came back (from clearing) and I told him that when he was away I trained him to be good. And when he said “Okay,” I did NOT faint! I wasn’t surprised they were talking because they were doing it so much before. At the fair, when I displayed the egg, the cow (Caleb) said, “Hey, that’s my play-food.” I said, “So what, and sit down.” WOW–he obeyed me, even though I didn’t train him to be obedient! All of them obeyed me all the time, even though I only trained Owen to be. All of a sudden, Deirdre my pig lifted up her shirt and–BOOYYYING–she bulged her belly out BIG! We all burst out laughing. Wow, what a belly; it surprised us! The horse was good until I said, “Wow, you are strong!” Then he fell down laughing.

After we went to the fair, everybody basically stopped playing.

Me, Coll Coll, Justin, Owen, and Evan played a game. Is what the game was, is Owen was getting chased by Coll-Coll. Then me, then I helped Owen. Then Justy started helping Owen fight Coll-Coll. And then Evey came and started helping Coll-Coll fight Owen and Justin and me.

And we were guarding the place–the porch steps. Justy was at the enclosed porch door outside. And I was guarding the front doorway, and Owen was scouting out and figuring out what was happening. I was guarding the door to make sure Collin didn’t come out. And he (Owen) figured out that Evan allied with Coll-Collin.

And one time me and Owen–all by ourselves, when Justy and Evan didn’t come–we were saying, “Safety walking along,” and singing that little song, until Collin jumped out and got us. Owen started saying it first, and then I started saying it too. He (Collin) was chasing us all around the house. And another time I was saying it again, and Owen wasn’t, and I think I heard Coll-Coll say, “Do-o-n’t say thatÂ…” Then I said it again. I said, “Safety walking alongÂ…” We were basically just saying, “Coll-Coll, you can’t catch us.” That’s basically what we meant.

And then Coll-Coll hided himself behind the jeep, and then he jumped out while we were saying, “Safety walking along”. I got really scared. I went “Yiiikes”, more like, “Yeh-huh!” And he chased us all around the house, and I dropped my sword and ran around the house. Because then I thought I could run faster, and I was trying to run faster, and faster! And then he–I think he went back in the house. And one time we said, “Coll-CollÂ…You aren’t in the backhallway, are you?” And he didn’t answer us, and that time I think he jumped out from behind the jeep.

One time in the game Evey went around the fort and Coll-Coll was in the lilac bushes, and I was always dodging so he couldn’t get me. And then Coll-Coll shot Evey, and Coll-Coll said, “Evey, you’re dead!” And Evey said, “Coll-Coll, you always hide there!” after that. Evan hided in the lilac bushes, too. Justy was going near the fort, too, and one time right, right before Dad called us in for Bible reading, Evan ran up to the pond and hided to play another game. And then Owen went to find him.

And another time Evey said, “Bang!–I think he said Bang, Bang!” and then he said, “You’re dead, Caleb!” And I said, “I was already dead, I was going someplace else to come back alive.” And after Evey said “Coll-Coll, you always hide there,” the game stopped being as fun, so I stopped playing it. And Dad called us in for Bible reading. And that was the end of the game.

The other day Justy, Caleb, Deirdre and I were playing a zoo game. At first I was being an animal–I was being a bear! And Deirdre was being a tiger. Caleb and Justy were being the zookeeper and cleaners. First I was a little bear and they were feeding me things like honey, which was like little toys that were yellow, and jars that they pretended were jars of honey. And they also fed me a little cup-ish toy that we pretended was full of water. They also gave a little jar full of blue roundish things–things like abacus beads and blue legos–that they pretended were blueberries.

I was acting like a bear by not eating politely like a human. I stuck my head in there and gobbled all the honey up and threw the container out of the cage. Justy said, “Mm–that’s a pretty un-polite bear,” disapprovingly. Caleb said in a very glad voice, “I like that bear!” At that point Justy was cleaning all the cages. And we always pretend that the couches are cages. And Justy kept taking out the cushions of the couch and cleaning them–sweeping and things like that.

And then when Justy got to my cage, he said “Prepare to move, prepare to move, or I’ll broom you with my broom!” [Ed: the phrase is being used to mean swat him with the broom.] And then he said, “Oh wait a minute, not quite yet.” and did something else. And then, when he did really lift up the cushion, I’d go galloping away making bear growly noises, very frightened. Meanwhile, Caleb the zookeeper was not doing so good. He was always getting in the way of Justin the zoo cleaner. And he was basically going around and keeping the animals company and hopping in the cages.

Later on in the game, I was the trainer, and Justy was the trainer too, and Caleb and Deirdre were animals. Caleb and Deirdre were tigers. I gave Deirdre a lamb to be her prey. Deirdre gobbled it down and I had to go away to get some animal food. (But really truly I had to go away to do dishes.) And while I was gone, Justy was giving Deirdre a different lamb to eat. Deirdre said, “What should I do wiv it?” And Justy said, “Eat it or keep it!” And Deirdre said, “I wanna keep it!” And then I came back, and I heard Deirdre say that, and so I said, “If you wanna keep it, you’ll have to feed it!” and I gave her some grass.

I like to play toy soldier games. What’s fun about playing toy soldier games is to build a big base and kill the enemy. Also, what you could build is Radar-Jammers and they make it so your radar can’t see the enemy’s base. One time me and Evan and Coll-Coll and Caleb all played a toy soldier game.

First we started out with little trucks as our builders. Then we make them build things that are: mines are solar panels. Why we have to build them is so we can build heavy tanks and infantry. Then we build things like radar so we can see where our enemy is. I was getting tons of tanks and I allied with Collin and Caleb.

And then Evan flew over with an airplane and–”Tat-tat-tat!”–shot Caleb’s buildings. Then Caleb said, “I don’t know what to do! I don’t have any air turrets!” And then I tried to come to Caleb’s defense with my infantry to shoot the airplane down. But Evan’s airplane flew away too fast.

Me and Caleb attacked Evan’s base together. Blam, blam, bang, bang, how we fought! Evan’s tanks shot me and Caleb’s infantries. Me and Caleb’s infantries got really bad killed by Evan’s tanks. But then my laser tanks and my heavy tanks shot Evan’s tanks–”Kabloomie!” Evan’s tanks got blewen (blown) up.

Then I regathered up my force and me and Collin attacked! Collin’s artillery shelled Evan’s turrets. We made lots of sound effects as we blew up each other’s stuff. It’s something different than those sound effects I was making, I just couldn’t write them down.

Evan’s laser turrets shot back, hurting Collin’s tanks. They got them a little bit, but Evan’s turrets weren’t such good aim so they missed some. My tanks shot Evan’s infantry and tanks. Evan’s few infantry and few tanks left over tried to shoot me and Collin’s tanks, pretty successfully actually, and most of my tanks were killed–only Collin’s heavy tanks were left, because he had a building that could upgrade his tanks and he [maybe meant to say ‘IÂ’] didn’t. Collin’s tanks got killed eventually.

All that time, I was trying to build as many tanks as I could, intending them to go over and destroy the rest of Evan’s army and base. We beat Evan in the end, and we all had fun.

Here’s what you’d see if you came to my Botanical Garden the way that I imagine it:

Let’s say you’re in a cart with a horse pulling it along. You’re going along a dirt road with streams running alongside it. You keep on going until you see a big mound of woodchips with a path going up it. You can hear the sound of really loud rushing water as you go up the woodchip mound. Once you’re almost at the top of the hill you are stopped by a monkey who tells you to pay one coin for admission, and he tells you to put your horse to one side of him, where all the other animals are, next to the hay. And he also points to a deep cave where you put your cart which has a path leading to it. There’s an arced wooden sign above you that says “Baby Chick Botanical Garden”. The sign is covered with moss and vines and is drippy with water–it’s always cool and breezy there, and there’s always a lot of fog because of the ponds and because the temperature’s always right for it.

You come up the path, and then you turn off to one side, and there’s a big pool with a path going all around it. (This is a pool for bathing in. All the animals and birds that live there drink and bathe in it.) You keep on rolling along the path, pulling your cart to the cave the monkey showed you, and when you look back on the path you see that there’s a old rock passageway in the air, with water rushing across it. It had vines dangling off it, and the water had been running in it constantly so it was really waterworn. It’s attached to the sign, with two wooden posts and the monkey’s stand helping hold it up. When you first came up, you heard really loud rushing water, but you couldn’t see it because the sign was hiding it.

When you get to the cave, you put your cart in there. It’s slightly dark, but there’s a couple of candles hanging from the ceiling, and there’s lots of other carts there, too. The cave is dim and echoey with the sound of water dripping and you can hear the huge rushing of water rushing over the cave. You walk out back onto the woodchip path, and you keep on walking for a little ways until you get to two other pools. There’s 3 pools: one for drinking out of, one for saving, and one for bathing in. And there’s a path that goes in between the pools into a grove of exotic fruit trees. So you keep on going, and you get to a fun slide. It’s a huge slide that goes very quick, with a tree growing up next to it. You climb up the fun slide and you look around.

To the north, you see a tall and pointy, crumbly rock, like a mountain except not as big, with water rushing down either side. One side of the water going down the mountain races off to the the rock passageway, flows over the cave, and splashes into both the drinking and saving pool. The other side of the water runs parallel to the stone wall that covers the whole Botanical Garden, and does a slight arc over the path, rushing off into the air, and then falls into the bathing pool with lots of splashing. You notice that there’s holes in the bottom of each pool and water going into them. (The holes in the bottom of each pool goes into a tube up into the crusty hill, and the water comes up either side, but you can’t see the tubes.) Next to the crumbly mountain, there’s a tool holder and two wheelbarrows that hold fertilizer water guns.

Now you slide down the fun slide, whizzing very fast, and land with a bump on woodchips. You walk along, the only way you can go, until you get to some pot gardens with some extraordinary flowers, and sunflowers and sundrops are growing up along the stone wall. The wall is like a castle wall except lower down–they’re all very big rocks, and it’s almost like they’re glued together. And you look up, and you realize you’re right next to the big crumbly mountain. And you follow the path along, until you get to the grove of trees, looking at all the weird kind of trees, with weird kinds of fruits you’ve never seen before. And you hear all sorts of weird birds that are very loud and echoey, and you see a hummingbird go to one of the blossoms on one of the trees. You come to a bi-i-ig tree that’s been grafted so that it has all the fruits you can possibly cram on it! It has a lot of green and red fruits, and it has lots of other fruits on it.

You continue along the path, heading south, and you come to a clearing, which is like a huge sandbox, with huge mounds of different kinds of soil. This is the place where the Botanical Garden stores all their manure and their fertilizer. You look to the corner, toward the northeast, and you see a shed and pygmy goats eating weeds that were pulled up. The people that take care of the Botanical Garden dump all their weeds where the goats are, and they eat them up, and when they digest them they turn it into manure.

That’s all the things that you’d see if you were in my Botanical Garden! In real true life, these were the things I used: For the trees that were in the garden, I put bamboo in a bucket and I put heavy rocks in a bucket to make sure they wouldn’t fall over. And for the ponds, I took kiddie pools and placed them in the places I wanted to. And our slide was for the fun slide at one end of it, and I brought up tools for the tool rack. And towards the sandbox there was bamboo growing up, and those were the grove of trees, and I pretended the sandbox was a mound of different manures, where goats were, just like I said before. And the funny thing about it was I actually made it on a woodchip pile! And I even got a tourist, her name was Cadie! (Really truly it was just Cadie, she came with a camera, but she wasn’t taking pictures of us, just of clouds.) And she and the other kids ran around the pool, which was the path around the bathing pond in my imaginary one, and slid down the fun slide and bonked her head on the tools because she was too tall! And she said, “You bonk your head on this!” and I said, “Not us shorties!”

I really like my Baby Chick Botanical Garden, and I had a lot of fun with it! The way I imagined it was really good! (I wish I could go to a real Botanical Garden sometime!)

Then, finally, Evan, being the Animal side leader and carrying the leader stick crawled up the path mooing! He’d chosen to be a cow, of all things! But he was still the Animal side leader so I jumped in front of him. “What do you want?” I said in my shady character voice. He just stuttered and mooed, so I said ” I will bring you a gift” and ran back to my hideout (where I had art supplies and a wooden sword), to make the “gift.” I couldn’t think of anything so I decided I would lead him to my hideout instead. Not a very good gift, since my hideout was easy to find, but I made it more fun by slipping him a paper that said: follow the signs. Then I put down a path of signs with arrows on them to point the way.

After he was there, he and the other little kids wanted to know why it was a gift, so I told them the only time you could talk to the Artist was if he was in his hideout. I told them all the things you could do with the Artist: hire him to kill enemies, pay him to write and draw, or to steal things and demoralize people. For example, he could sneak into people’s (or animals’, of course) homes and tack up signs with skulls and warnings drawn on them, make things placed in queer places, and (this last one’s my favorite) drop signs with arrows on them leading through prickers only to end up with a sign that says Ha, Ha.

Unfortunately, they asked me to do none of this. They just sat around looking gloomy till I finally showered them with ideas of what to do. Then I decided to make some rules: 1. No barging around in the Artist’s house. 2. No wearing capes or treasure in the Artist’s house or he will snatch and keep them, but it’s all right to carry them. Justin took rule 1. too seriously. He would inchy squinchy all the way to and through my house. (My house because I was always the Artist) .

Evan had me draw him two signs a little bit later. One said: The Butcher, and the other said: Warning: all animals should stay undercover. (In our games Butchers loved to kill any animal, especially baby chicks!) Then he put them and some other signs that were colored red all along part of the path. Evan, being the Butcher, patrolled all along his path until he was killed by Owen and Justin. Owen was being the Animal side leader and Justin was being a bounty hunter hired by Owen. (In our games bounty hunters were people who could be hired to kill or steal.)

After Evan had left to be a Butcher, I had put up Closed signs at my home and pretended the Artist was on vacation. The new character I chose to be was the bird that had carried the Artist to his vacation and had been rewarded with a sword. I came flying up just in time to see the Butcher die. As he died, he dropped an egg that hatched into the new Evan: a bird. I gave him to Owen to raise. Once he was big enough I taught him to fly, and he flew off to make a nest out of hay. (It was really big.) I got tired of being a bird, so I pretended to be the pack-up man and packed up the Artist’s place.

After that I decided to be a mysterious Ninja who you only saw if he was being hired to kill you. I was going to accomplish this by having Caleb be my messenger. But as soon as I picked my hideout–a great place on a woodpile where I could see everybody but they couldn’t see me–it was time for the little kids to go to bed! Ah, well. That was a really fun game.