The Cursed Swing Set

At the old house, we had an ancient wooden swing set for the kids to play on. I wasn’t going to move it to the new house. My wife convinced her father to buy one for the new house as a Christmas present to the little ones. All we had to do was to pick one out & he would break out the credit card.

Fast forward to early spring 2020 – the year of the Covid-19 pandemic. As the cases started building around the world, my wife & I started getting nervous about the spring. In March, the school district announced an unplanned half day the Friday before St. Patrick’s day. The wife picked up the kids from school and drove to a local swing set dealer and chose the unit. That evening, the governor closed all schools in the state for 30 days.

Two weeks later, and the governor announces that all non-essential businesses are to close. My bride calls the swing set dealer and ours had been received from the manufacturer the day before. If we’re going to be home this afternoon, they can install it before the closure order goes into effect.

Seems like this is fated to be great.

A few weeks after the swing set is installed, we notice that my son is bringing bent & rusty nails into the house every night at dinner. Finally I ask him to show me where these are coming from. He leads me to the foot of the rock climbing wall.

What the hell???

The nails are not coming from the swing set – these things have years of rust on them and I think all the fasteners on this unit are threaded.

There is a bare spot in the soil where a six-year-old has been digging with sticks. I start to poke about with a garden trowel & come up with a nail pretty quickly.

Then a second.

Then I notice that there is a lot of charcoal in the soil.

It appears that the previous owners used this spot as a fire circle, and liked to burn construction debris.

I grab my metal detector & start sweeping the grass.

Fifteen minutes later, I’ve got a takeout container full of nails. Thirty minutes after that, I have a two-gallon bucket full of rusty nails, screws, hooks, eyes, and fasteners I don’t recognize.

I believe I got them all, as I swept an area 6 feet outside every piece of metal I located.

That was May.

Fast forward to the middle of June, and the kids are coming into the house with purple feet and matching stains on their clothes. I look at the tree that shades the swing set & notice the berries. A bit of internet sleuthing, and I come to the conclusion that it’s a Mulberry tree.

I’m torn, because the dirt-hippy part of me loves the idea of eating food grown on my property, but the proud property owner part of me realizes that between the kids & the dog (who I now notice has purple stains in his fur) this tree will destroy my rugs & swing set.

This tree is going to have to go. But not before I make one batch of mulberry wine. And try to propagate it somewhere else in the yard where the berries won’t be a nuisance.

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