The grass is freshly mowed, the air has cooled down a little, and the backyard beckons. It won’t be long before the lawn maintenance schedule relaxes a little, and you can relax with it! Autumn is a favorite time of year for outdoor activities in the southeastern United States.  Maybe it’s time to invest in some lawn game equipment geared more toward grown-ups!

Lawn bowling in its various forms can be enjoyed, even if the surface is not regulation turf or clay. Bocce, Pétanque and Bowls all follow the same general pattern – tossing or rolling a ball toward a target and scoring according to proximity.

Bocce is played with eight large balls and one smaller ball (called the pallino).  The game can be played with 2, 4, or 8 players.

Pétanque is a form of boules where the goal is, while standing inside a starting circle with both feet on the ground, to throw metal balls as close as possible to a small wooden ball called a cochonnet (literally “piglet”) or jack.

Bowls is a sport in which the objective is to roll slightly asymmetric balls, called bowls, so that they stop close to a smaller—normally white—bowl called the “jack” or “kitty”.

Hope you’ve had some fun with this “Backyard Fun” series! But whatever you choose to do for fun in your backyard, keep safety in mind. There are the obvious cautions relating to pools, grills and fences, but not every backyard has those. Do keep an eye out for these hazards though:

Broken or improperly trimmed shrubs with protruding branches, especially those at eye level.

Depressions or holes caused by burrowing animals which could lead to foot and ankle injuries.

Ground-dwelling wasps.

Vining plants or grass runners that could trip.

Poison ivy, poison oak or poison sumac. If you have children or outdoor animals, check for and remove any plants that poison by ingestion, such as dieffenbachia.

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