Whenever the spousal unit wants to crack me up, he'll say about some project of which I don't approve, "I sweartogawd, it's only temporary." Without fail, these words will make me roll my eyes so hard that I look like a human slot machine.

There is a story behind all this. There's always a story.

On Dec. 7 we celebrated the 30th anniversary of moving into this house. This can be seen as either:

a) shining testimony that we had a clear idea of who we were and where we wanted to be, even when we were young, or
b) shining testimony that inertia is, indeed, very hard to break.

The truth is probably an amalgam of the two.

About a year after we moved in here it became clear to us that we needed a woodshed to protect our firewood from the elements. After having to shovel as much as five feet of snow off our woodpiles, we realized that stacking the wood under plastic just didn't cut it.

Well, we had very little money. We could barely afford the bulldozing fees for the tiny clearing we'd opened up in the woods for the house. The only solution was to build the cheapest woodshed possible within that tiny clearing, cheek by jowl with the house.

Because we had no money, we used poplar logs from the land, loosely joined, and old tin a neighbour gave us from a barn they'd taken down. The second it went up, I knew that woodshed was a mistake. A big, honking, so ugly it made my eyes bleed mistake. Not only was it ugly, it crowded the house, robbing us of light and a feeling of spaciousness.

I whined incessantly gave my considered opinion about the woodshed quite often. The spousal unit reassured me that "it was only temporary" and that "we'll take it down next year and build something better farther from the house."

Temporary, in this case, turned out to be 29 years. Why? Well, the spousal unit lost his job in the Great Canadian Financial Meltdown of 1982. It took a few years for him to build up his reputation as a carpenter and for me to build mine as a gardener. Then we had a daughter to put through university. Major money was put aside to wipe out her student debt.

Time and money were very tight for a very long time.

We built a new woodshed a couple of years ago, but the old one still held firewood. We decided it was stupid to spend weeks moving wood from the old shed to the new, time that could be spent planting hostas. We decided to just use up the older wood and in the meantime stock the new woodshed with new stuff we'd culled from storm-damaged or dying trees.

Last spring we used the last of the old firewood. I nabbed the spousal unit as backup for my numerous landscaping frenzies projects, and he did more work on the porches, so the woodshed stayed up.

Then last month we got an unexpected thaw. The spousal unit could get the tractor up to our house, which meant he had a way to haul away the logs from our old woodshed. Hammer, pry bar and chainsaw in hand, he took it down.

"But Marn," I can hear my three loyal readers saying, "didn't you mention you guys used up the last of the firewood? What's that stuff where the woodshed used to be?"

Excuse me while I do my human slot machine imitation. It's surprisingly therapeutic.

There. I feel so much better.

Now, where was I? Oh yes. That, three loyal readers, would be crap treasures that the spousal unit amassed. Packrat that he is, he could not leave a building even partially empty. He has given me his word that when the snow disappears the crap treasures will disappear.

I have muttered through clenched jaws that either he will deal with it or I will deal with it. Since my dealing with it will involve vapourizing it in some way, I expect that he will take it upon himself to move his crap treasures as quickly as possible. Take my word for it, gone they will be.

While the woodshed was going down and logs were being hauled, I kept an eagle eye on the spousal unit because I wanted to make sure he didn't hurt my beloved flowering crab, my 55th birthday present. If you squint hard at the picture below, you can see its outline in front of the woodshed.