Backyard Bamboo

Backyard Babmboo

Behind our house there is a small forest of bamboo.  Most of the bamboo is on our neighbor's property, but each spring, new bamboo shoots poke up out of the ground on our side of the fence.  I love the bamboo, but I love it best on their side of the fence (where I can really appreciate it).  

When we first moved to our house, the bamboo forest was so thick you could hardly see through it.  On warm summer nights fireflies floated inside the forest and it lit up like a small city.  It reminded me of the Peter Pan ride at Disney World, where you could fly over London at night with Peter Pan and see city the lights way down below, sparkling from the traffic and buildings: firefly traffic.  I was amazed at how many fireflies would flicker in the forest in the evenings.  I had never seen so many at one time.

The neighbor who moved into the house with the bamboo forest thinned out the bamboo stalks, and some fireflies went with them.  It's not been the same since, but it is still quite wonderful.  I walked back into the bamboo forest a couple weeks ago and I felt like I'd stepped into an entirely separate world far from my fenced-in backyard.  It was easy to imagine I was far away in the mountains of Japan and might, at any moment, spot a panda wandering through the forest.