Male: Of course plants aren’t the only thing to grow in the backyard. In a very real sense, the backyard is the place for growing families too.

Now, when I was a kid, options for backyard fun included things like bad croquet and I suppose simpler games like hide and seek too. But as this piece of air mail from Mike Sanford indicates, today, I guess there are more options.

You might think in this digital decade that old fashion outdoor games might simple be fading away leaving to the croquet to the idle rich and bocce to the Italian boys of summer, summer of 1942 that is.

Well, think again. These days, golden oldie games like badminton, volleyball and even croquet are riding a new wave of popularity for all the right reasons.

Julie: It brings people out of the house. It brings them off the sofa. It brings them outside to be in the sun and play.

Male: Julie Keel Kitchen is a fun fanatic and an expert on outdoor games. When she’s not at Cal State Sacramento teaching non-traditional sports and recreation, she’s out with the neighborhood kids blurring that line between work and play.

Julie: The thing with backdoor games is that you can really change the rules so that everyone will be successful and they like it and they really want to enjoy it.

The good thing about badminton in the backyard is that there are official rules and you can get them and they do come with the packages but you can just make up the rules as it goes.

Male: That’s a big part of Julie’s backyard game philosophy. Badminton, volleyball, bocce all have rules. But if you modify them, bend them a little, then everyone competes on a more equal basis and has fun. So let your kids take an extra whack or two and think about following Julie’s lead into new fields of fun with games you can build yourself.

So Julie, there’s a pretty cool game that you and your dad have invented. What’s it called and what’s it about?

Julie: It’s a great game. We’d like to call it wrap it up. It’s very easy to put together, very easy to build.

Male: Just PVC pipe, right?

Julie: So this is what we use in the throw if you like orange balls or white balls.

Male: I like the orange. Just golf balls with holed drilled through.

Julie: You have to make sure that you don’t get the ones with water, the liquid filled ones or else you’ll have a big mess.

Male: I’m sure. That would ruin the game right from the start.

Julie: So it’s just like horse shoes. I mean, we’re aiming at this horizontal piece of the PVC pipe across the way from us.

Male: And you throw it?

Julie: You throw it any way. You can do it underhand, you can do it overhand.

Male: With Julie’s rules, there are teams of two game to fifteen points.

Julie: One of the things about this game is that you can be right on. Right down the center and it can be some crazy things that can just miss where it goes right through or perhaps the most frustrating one is when you’re exactly right on and the golf balls hit each other and it bounces way back.

Male 2: It’s creative, it’s different. It’s horse shoes and golf. I like it.

Male: I understand that you’ve been heard to curse at this game before.

Julie: A little bit but today, I’ve been pretty good.

Male: Yes, well the camera is here.

Julie: I just had a student tell me that he plays at his house. He did it with a chair, somehow a modified version with the chair that he did. If you enjoy being outside, you can look at anything that you have in your house, chair is a great creative example of how you can create your own game and make up your own rules and just kind of play with what you have.

Male: So whether you build it or buy it, stick or official rules or make up your own, Julie says get out to your backyard and just do it.