When I was a Wee Lassie (probably like 12) I had just read many books about children in the woods. So I put on my jacket and hauled my ass into the backyard to play Child Surviving in the Woods. At some point it started raining (and it was March so it was a COLD rain) and did that stop me? No! I parked under the play set to wait it out. From under here I looked at the garden bed and noticed carrot tops. This was unusual as we were still a few weeks out from doing the planting. IT WAS MIRACULOUS PROVISIONS (carrot sprouts that had survived the winter and were now growing in the spring melt). I dug my ice cold carrots out of the dirt and washed them in the rain before enjoying my wonderful meal under the play set. And I think this story says a lot about my parents who presumably were watching their strange daughter sit in the cold rain and dig up their dormant garden and just thought "Eh, she seems to be content and the backyard is fenced and safe. Let's leave her be."
Another anecdote from when I was a Wee Lassie (also probably about 12) is that I would often gather items from the yard and throw them into one of our window wells while pretending to be a Macbeth witch. This included pebbles, grass clippings, weeds, dandelions and clover flowers, mushrooms, and other odds and ends that blew into the backyard. This one my parents did put a stop to because they (understandably) didn't want to clean junk out of the window wells because that was a pain.
