My Treehouse

I received an e-mail from someone, asking me about my tree house. Well, I live three stories up, amongst the trees. I am surrounded by trees including mountain ash, Japanese plum, poplar, douglas fir, hemlock, pine and cherry trees. In the springtime, the Japanese plum and cherry trees are a mass of pink blossoms. When Phinnaeus was about three years old, he looked out the window at the blossoms and said, "Those are the boofelest things I have ever seen..." The douglas fir trees are filled with birds nests, and the raccoons sit in the nests in the late spring, hoping to steal the eggs. The crows dive-bomb them and put up an awful uproar, all of which usually starts at about 4:30 in the morning.

As I am writing this, there is a huge windstorm blowing in off the Pacific Ocean, and the seagulls and crows are gliding and swooping on the breeze. Seagulls are very social animals, and they love to tell jokes to each other. And then they laugh, and laugh, and laugh at the jokes. Sometimes they will set up such a cacophony, it really makes us wonder what on earth is going on. I love the scene in "Finding Nemo" where the seagulls are sitting on the pier yelling "Mine, mine, mine, mine!" until the albatross tells them to "Shaddup!" Seagulls really are like that, and they start very early in the morning. You don't need an alarm clock if you live anywhere near seagulls.

I'm fortunate that my tree house faces south, and I get the sunshine summer and winter. For some reason, which I do not understand, prime real estate in Vancouver is anything that faces the mountains, which are north. But for several months of the year, anything facing north gets no sunshine at all. I would rather have sunshine than a view of some big, dreary mountains, even though they are spectacular. In the summer months, I spend all my time on my terrace, and when the Munchkins come to visit, we eat our meals out there. We have spent many an hour on a bright summer morning, sitting at the patio table eating blueberry pancakes with maple syrup and discussing life.

So, there you have a very brief tour of my tree house.