His Childhood Garden Was Mostly Dirt, but It Was a Happy Place

The backyard I grew up in (“State of the Yard,” Special Home & Garden Issue, May 21) was mostly dirt because (1) we played endless games of touch football and tore everything up; (2) to my dad’s horror, we dug a 5-foot hole to build a tunnel like the one we saw in “The Great Escape”; (3) the dog dug up everything we didn’t. I can’t imagine any of the elegant yards in your magazine offering as happy a childhood.

Wayne Aronson

Northridge