The Play House

I don't like braggers so I try not to chirp when something really good happens, but recently

one of those "one-in-a-million" things happened to me and I must tell the tale....Bear with me.

When my sainted mother was 4 years old, her grandfather (my great grandfather) built her a play house.  By today's  over-the-top standards, it was probably rather plain...a simple white building with three little tilt-open windows, and a door...no sleeping loft, no tile floor, but according to her many many hours were spent there hosting tea parties, playing dress-up and later reading...

Many years later when I was born, the play house was duly installed in our back yard where the next generation (me) did much the same thing. 

 Daddy, who took "handy" to new levels, repainted it, planted bushes in front, installed a counter and built a sink, which when hooked up to a garden hose, provided running water...perfect for...hosting tea parties, playing dress-up and later reading. It also afforded a nice place to "sleep-out" and later, when I outgrew it, a place for my (long-suffering) brother to indulge in his new favorite hobby, ham radio operation.  The sink became unneccessary, so it was removed and replaced by a big map of the world along with new flooring and paint.

Fast forward a few years...I got married and moved to the farm...When boys came along here, I wanted to bring the little house here, but Ma insisted it remain in her yard...By now it was more garden shed than playhouse, but it was good storage space for the large toys grandparents buy little boys.  Still, I coveted the play house and I wanted it to live here.

That brings us to now.  With Ma's 80th birthday looming and a brand new room being constructed here at Farm and Fru Fru for her to move into, I was giddy just thinking about FINALLY having the play house with me.  I knew she would not want to leave it behind and began making plans in my head for where it would sit, what I could make of it, etc.....till the farmer got wind of it.

Let me pause here and say that landscaping and anything "yard" related falls so far down on the farmer's list of what is important that  it doesn't even make the list.... but it never really occured to me that he might not want the play house to live here.  There is not a window in our house that does not provide a view of a shed.  We have tractor sheds, a wood shed, a dump shed, a chicken house, several barns, a pig house, the list goes on and on...we are a little shed city here at FFF...most recently, he built a hay barn that would hold hay for the entire county, so I was surprised when he was not "excited" at the prospect of this teeny tiny playhouse with it's teeny tiny little window boxes gracing our back yard.  After a few days, he suggested that perhaps it could live in the woods.  Not what I had in mind.  One day, if grandchildren arrive, I can't see telling 4 year olds to run up into the woods and play in the playhouse but watch out for the snakes, spiders, coyotes, possums, dogs and deer on the way.

Then there was the moving problem.  The playhouse was at Ma's 11 miles from here.  The question of if and how it could be moved remained.  At 76 years old, it would not take lots of jostling, not to mention special equipment would be needed to load and transport it to our house.  With all these issues, I dropped the subject for the time being and in true Scarlott O'Hara Style decided I would ..."think about that tomorrow."
The day after my birthday, I drove into the driveway and there, on a flatbed trailer, sat my playhouse.
I came this close to running the truck off the road.  I literally did a double take....but sure enough, there it sat in all it's teeny tiny glory just waiting to be planted in the back yard.  Driving up the drive were the two farmhands and my nephew grinning from ear to ear....On their own, they had procured the flatbed, figured out how to lift the little house off the ground and onto the trailer and transported it to our house, all in a week and unbeknownst to me....for my 55th birthday.  No one asked them to do it, told them to do it or helped them do it. 

They tackled the problem, figured out how to handle it, then just did it.  What a gift.
I take back all those bad things I say about them.  They are fine offspring indeed.

So, I thought you might like to see photos of my prize....it's a gem.  I am still not at all
sure how I will use it, but I figure, you  just can't have too many sheds. 
I've lived with the farmer too long.....