Veeka's treehouse

A Marvel of EngineeringSee that contraption near my garage? That is Veeka's new domain and her own little kingdom. There's a very old plum tree in my back yard that was going kind of rotten, so I had several of the branches cut off a month ago. The severed branches had trunks that, if you sawed them a certain way, you could place a platform atop it. And so Veeka was constantly clambering up this tree, as she had gotten captivated about the idea of *reading* in a tree after I'd told her that is how I had spent a lot of my childhood. Oma had done the same thing as well. Anyway...I got the idea to actually put railings around this platform and make a little house out of it. I got a few people to help contribute toward the expense and got a carpenter to draft a plan as to how he'd build the thing. So the second photo is of Veeka sitting on these trunks, waiting for the 'house' to be built.Well, this week was the culmination of her little hopes. All week long the carpenter was sawing away and bringing in wood and constructing all sorts of things and by Thursday afternoon, voila! By the time she came home, the paint was already on and, although she was told to wait til it had dried overnight, by 5 pm, she was clambering up the ladder. Today she finally had one of her little friends over to play in it with her and sure enough, they ended up transporting several potted plants up the ladder and somehow ended up cutting one of my prize irises in the process. Now Veeka has somewhere besides her room to hang out. She also got to go to the National Zoo this week with her class, so she's riding high.Her mommy has gotten a temporary gig helping a friend do a PR campaign for a book, which will also go towards paying for that tree house and other bills. Freelance writing assignments are a bit scarce at present, so we are working on book proposals. One desired job possibility fell through but there's another on the horizon, so never a dull moment. Tomorrow (May 13) is my fifth Mother's Day - and my parents' 62nd wedding anniversary. Next Saturday, which is MY birthday, I'll be speaking at a book festival, plus some friends are planning a 'female poker night' which I must say I've never experienced before. This is the season of spending my Saturdays doing yard work, as now's the time to get everything planted and seeded before the mosquitoes show up for the summer, making life outside miserable.