Today I continue my quest in creating and posting one block a day of the fabulous That Town And Country Quilt by the lovely Susan Claire. This is day one hundred and eighty-six of that project.

This quilt block shows a sandbox. Each corner of the sandbox is capped with the end of a brown log. The upper left brown log has grass at the bottom. The sides of the sandbox are made up of a green fabric indicating the walls/boundary. Inside is a light brown fabric for sand, a truck made out of pen, a yellow toy shovel stuck in the sand, and an orange bucket. At the bottom of the square is jagged grass. This is all against a blue salmon-patterned background. — Click To Enlarge

My sons always had a sandbox.

They spent many hours rearranging their terrain while making up stories about what was happening. When Scott and I were building our house, I needed a way to keep an eye on the boys and know they were playing safe.

We took eight 20’ logs and made it two courses high. We notched them together and made a giant sandbox. It was 20’ by 20’ and 24” deep.

When the littlest was digging down, he could get where we could only see his bottom half sticking out. A garden hose was always on hand with an on/off so they could have lakes, moats, and floods.

Even years later, when the logs had begun to rot and had been cut up for firewood, and the remaining sand tilled into what became a raspberry patch, I occasionally found a little truck when I was planting.

It always brought a tear to my eye thinking about those fun times when my sons were young.