seasons as children / honey bunny

When we were little, my brother, sister and i used to spend a lot of time in the backyard of our house in Framingham MA. It must have been around 4th grade.. I had one very good friend named Lauren Graurer-Gray and we would bike to the library together. She insisted we walk around her prickly crab-grassy backyard with no shoes on, which my mom said later could give someone lyme disease.

In our Chen backyard, there were three gardens. My brother had a vegetable and fruit patch; I was envious most of the strawberries. I had a neighboring plot of 'springtime' little flowers that were mostly pastel and blue hued blooms. My little sister had the 'summer' flowers, big and bold and colorful, sunflowers and tulips.
A note: these 'seasons' are mostly what they looked like visually as a kid, not actual blooming time of year.
It was behind this house that we also had a shed where I wanted to house a family horse, and there was an opening to an aquaduct that our family would walk along behind the houses in our neighborhood and stroll together. Usually my brother had a big stick he would wave around.
One of our neighbors upon moving away gave our family our first real pet (besides when we were babies and had two dogs, good stories for another time.); Honey Bunny. She, like the house, couldn't be taken with us when we moved and lives among the memories we had there. One afternoon my brother and I were standing in the front yard with Honey Bunny. We had a little harness for her, almost like a ferret leash, though she was a fat Rex rabbit. Suddenly, and I ragged on my brother for a while because of this, she bolted, and the leash tugged so fast we saw her bolt off into a neighboring yard which we were pretty sure had large dogs. It was a strange coincidence that soon after, we had to move. Right before we left, my brother and I stood again in that yard and did a strange thing. I dont remember who's idea it was, but we started making a little dirt pile there where we'd lost Honey Bunny. I've always had sweaty hands, and I tried to mix as much sweat as possible into the handfuls of dirt, and we spit a little I think. That way Honey Bunny would know we'd remembered her, if she ever came back. It was very important, as we drove away, that the dirt pile was still there.
Later as a family we'd have at one time, four parakeets. and another bunny. But she was the first.

oh ps. happy thanksgiving
(i think what i mean is. in other words. time is sensory rather than linear. and your first loss doesn't get replaced, even if its just a mound of crap that remains.)