RIVER CITY JOURNAL: STAND BACK! POP'S ON ANOTHER ONE OF HIS BLASTED QUESTS

There's going to be barn-raising over yonder at the Sullivan place, so why don't y'all come on over. Bring a hammer.

My two favorite seasons of the year are spring.

First comes early spring, when green things poke up out of the ground and promise to turn into golden daffodils or calla lillies.

Then comes late spring, which is what summer would like to be when it grows up.

The only use I have for winter is it makes me long for spring. I tolerate summer only because it isn't winter.

Autumn, as seasons go, has its good points. The biggest problem with autumn is that it picks up a lot of bad habits from winter.

So that leaves me with spring. Which I love.

When spring is in the air, I usually catch a whiff of garden tools being unloaded and put on shelves at garden centers. I begin to hear the siren song of small engines that power lawn mowers and mulchers and edgers and tillers.

Yes, I'm the guy who once owned a chain saw even though the freshly sodded yard around our new house didn't have a single tree. Hey, I'm patient.

This year, I've caught barn-building fever.

OK. It's not really a barn. It's a garden shed. Somewhere to put all those things that live in the garage.

Although I didn't really have to, I took inventory to bolster my case for a portable building.

There are things that need gasoline. There are things that need elbow grease. There are things that you climb. And things you dig with. There are the rodent-proof containers for bird seed. There are the hummingbird feeders waiting to be hung on the eaves of the family room. There are miles and miles of hose. There's that stack of plastic buckets that seems to grow on its own. There are all those flower pots and half-empty fertilizer bags. There's that spreader that makes my lawn look like a plaid quilt every time I put on fertilizer from those half-empty bags.

None of these things belong in a garage. If they were properly housed in an appropriate shelter of their own, there would be ever so much more room for cars in our garage. We could actually pull into the garage without fearing a head-on collision with the mulching mower or the aluminum extension ladder.

Whenever I get a notion like this barn-building idea, I usually don't let go. My family knows this. They call it questing. "Uh-oh," they will say, "Pop's on a quest again."

Quests come in many shapes. If, for example, you decide you need a family-size griddle on which to cook the perfect weekend pancakes, you can be pretty darn sure no store in town will have large electric griddles on its shelves. Which means you have to make a scorched-earth search for a griddle.

That's a quest.

Barns suitable for pleasant residential neighborhoods aren't easy to come by. Ask me. I'll tell you. I'll tell you about my search for something small enough to fit somewhere in the yard but not big enough to look like we're going to raise goats or Shetland ponies.

While we have a fine, large yard, we really don't have a good place for a garden shed unless we put it under the magnificent magnolia tree that shields our patio from the street. As you can imagine, this idea hasn't been popular with my wife.

With my barn-building fever raging, it's sometimes difficult to think clearly. So the fact we really don't have a place to put a barn of any size has not sunk in.

My wife has learned over the years that the only cure for a fever that results in a quest is to show her support in hopes I'll just go buy the doggone barn and stop fussing about it.

I have a plan. I think I have a spot for the shed that will pass muster with the neighbors and in no way endanger the magnolia. And it won't be an eyesore for us either.

With this plan in mind, I've been looking at storage sheds. Most of them are too big. Way too big.

Quest time.

I'm looking for the garden barn that's just right. When the folks who make garden sheds went into business, they didn't think to call me and ask what the perfect size would be. They just started slapping together 10-by-12 and 8-by-10 portable buildings right and left. Heck, you could put a milk cow in most of these little barns and still have room left over to slop a few hogs.

In an effort to get my spring quest over and done with, my wife suggested I contact a builder and have a perfect-sized barn custom built.

I have to admit that sounds like a good solution. Almost too good, in fact.

I think I've got this cooperation business figured out.

My wife wants something. I'll bet it costs about as much as, oh, say -- a small barn?

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.