Me and brothers and my cousins when we were young and in Ohio.
Looooong time ago lol.

The house we had there was awesome.
One of my fondest memories of the house was the huge yard we had and some of the things that happened in that yard.
.When we first moved into out property in Ohio the house had orginally been owned by two little old ladies.
They had died in the house, old age nothing sinister, though the house was considered haunted till dad put avacado green siding on it and that's a whole nother story lol.

Our property was the size of a football field and it had tons of stuff on it.
Rural town in Ohio and the old ladies had lived there for years so it had a HUGE garden that had seen better days. Every fruit tree imaginable including an old walnut tree that I fell out of at one point and was lucky to not break anything. Lilac bushes galore.
And a chicken coop and a hen house, yes they are two different things lol.
Dad had it all bulldozed into a huge pile and decided that he'd have a bonfire.
The pile was the size of a mobile home in height and length and he thought bonfire and we'll roast weiners and invite the neighborhood.
Yeah that did'nt go quite as planned as the lady behind us called the fire department.
Dad offered them weiners, they were not amused.

Now mind you the lady was in her rights at this time and dad was so wrong but it was funny and it's a great story NOW, however at the time oh boy was he pissy.

So we finally get the yard the way we want it.
Cept for the thistles.
Those thistle plants that start out small but grow to be three and four feet tall?
yeah we had lots of those.
The lady behind us did'nt like the thistles, she complained to dad, she complained to the neighbors etc.
She began calling the cops on other things that happened in OUR yard ie we kids were too loud, the snowmobile was making too much noise, the list went on.

Finally dad decided he was leaving a patch of thistle plants.
A big patch, right where she could see it from her window that she was always watching our yard with.
Mind you those were the only thistle plants left in the yard.
And they grew, and grew, into this huge patch roughly four by four.
Dad kept them trimmed and kept the rest of the yard up.
It made this old lady mad, we'd find out that she was still complaining about it from the neighbors who thought it was funny, she complained to dad who just ignored her, and she'd glare at us from the window.

We kids never really paid her that much mind.
We used the thistle patch as a deterrent to having my littlest brother or other smaller kids in the neighborhood join the bigger kids by telling them if they wanted to join our group they had to go through initiation. Initiation? Getting thrown into the middle of that thistle patch.
(this was back in the 80's before we as kids had heard of gangs and hazing etc innocent kid stuff)
We never threw anyone into the patch, as no one wanted to deal with the repercussions.
However we did have someone run into it one night during hide and seek lol.

Lots of things happened in that back yard, snowmobiling, football, treehouses etc.

I think part of the whole past and these memories is why I want to keep the house as well.  I want to build my own memories from start to finish. 
I want to make this a place where I can live out my days and enjoy the yard, my neighbors, and my children and grandchildren at some point.

I don't think that is so much to hope for.