Two Monkeys in a Tree

This is the little "treehouse" the girl has been working on recently. She has been climbing this tree for quite a few years - it's just the perfect height that it's not too dangerous and is easy enough for her and now for her brother too, to climb.

They decided this morning that the "treehouse" was where lunch needed to be eaten. I was skeptical. I wasn't sure they could rig something up (using no nails) that would be stable enough to hold them both and would be big enough for them to sit on and eat their lunches. I was wrong.

The pail is attached to a string and used to transport things up and down out of the tree.

Robert Louis Stevenson is one of my favorite poets, when it comes to poems dealing with childhood.

Foreign Lands

Up into the cherry tree
Who should climb but little me?
I held the trunk with both my hands
And looked abroad in foreign lands.

I saw the next door garden lie,
Adorned with flowers, before my eye,
And many pleasant places more
That I had never seen before.

I saw the dimpling river pass
And be the sky's blue looking-glass;
The dusty roads go up and down
With people tramping in to town.

If I could find a higher tree
Farther and farther I should see,
To where the grown-up river slips
Into the sea among the ships,

To where the road on either hand
Lead onward into fairy land,
Where all the children dine at five,
And all the playthings come alive.

Robert Louis Stevenson