It's likely that ours is the smallest backyard on the street. The lot size is average, 100' by 50' but the house seems to take up an awfully large part of it. Mind, the house is set back from the street more than most, and that's a feature we certainly appreciate.

But back when fences were being built demarcating property lines twenty-five years ago, both our neighbours on either side insisted that their property lines extended into ours, despite legal documentation to the contrary and the staked marking of professional surveyors and my husband simply didn't feel like contesting their claims, allowing the fence on either side to intrude on our property. It would only have represented at most a foot on either side, he felt, and wasn't worth arguing about.

Since our house is located within a loop of a street where it bends most profoundly that's another reason for the shortened property line. Those located on the outer bound areas of the loop have immense backyards. But the size of ours suits us well enough. We find it represents enough garden work area to keep us busy. And it's the gardens, beds and borders that delight us.

And the size is suitable to reflect the exercise-room required to keep two little poodles happy, running about after one another with abandon. We have an elevated deck with about a four-foot height of headroom, and they race under the deck and around all the garden obstacles, up the rock garden and down again, in their chases after one another. So they've got exercise aplenty.

Even their racing about, barking after one another doesn't seem to disturb the mother robin sitting on her eggs in the nest she and her mate built under the joists of the deck.Their presence has placed an obstacle on my husband being able to extract the last of the stored garden furniture out from under the deck where they've been throughout the winter months. We'll wait until the hatchlings have fledged to get that done.