Three Things

When I worked custodial at BYU, we came up with a game to occupy ourselves during the long hours of sweeping and vacuuming.  It was called "Three Things" and it involved a lot of imagination.  One of your fellow workers would give you three seemingly separate things and you would have to make up a story using all of them. 
Here are my objects that I'm going to spin a story around.  Lilac bushes, straw bales, and baked beans.  Also in this story is an apology to someone long wronged.
The story begins with a lilac hedge.  When we moved to our "new" house, my mom wanted a hedge of lilacs like the one we had at our "old" house-- you know-- the one across the road.  My dad gathered up sucker plants and put them along the western and northern edges of the lawn.  To keep them alive in the summer, Dad poked a hole in the bottom of a bunch of 5 gallon buckets and we would keep them filled with water that would trickle out and keep the ground moist around each baby plant. 

I don't know a kid alive who doesn't like to make forts, no matter what the construct:  under a table, couch cushions, blankets draped across objects, etc.  Only the truly lucky kid has straw bales to make enviable forts.  We were pretty good at fort making.  Mostly our forts were made en situ.  We didn't usually have permission to lug straw bales around outside of the sheds.  Our very best fort was built in front of the barn.  It was fantastic.  It had at least two rooms and if we had to stoop over to be inside, it wasn't by much.  There was an actual roof, but I don't remember if it was pieces of corrugated tin or more bales.  We repurposed some old carpet scraps to place on the 'floors'.  One night we decided to sleep in our creation.  There was a pesky mosquito that kept whining in our ears and I'm sure that was the reason, not the darkness of an Idaho night in the country that sent us back to the house. 
What little time we had away from chores was spent in our fort.  We sneaked cans of baked beans out there.  We built a fire in our fort and heated our unopened can of beans over an open flame in a dusky, close aired environment.  We did not die. (There are several things we did as kids that should have led to our demise, which cements the theory that God has something in store for us.)

It would be nice if our story ended there.  An apology for brain damage would suffice.  But no.  A greater wrong was done.  Unfortunately, there was a witness to the oldest three kids' shenanigan;  a smart little boy who watched us build a fire in our fort and not die.  He tried the same thing with disastrous results. 
Despite the hammer of anger that reigned that day, there were several blessings.  Little brother did not die in his fire.  The farm did not burn down (then).  He came back to the house yelling about a fire and I ran out barefoot.  I don't remember everything clearly, but I do remember that the hose was not near long enough.  I found one of those buckets with the hole in the bottom and filled it up with water from the well.  This is a miracle in and of itself.  If you've ever tried to fill a cup up with water under pressure, you know how quickly the cup can be snatched away from your hand.  Imagine water coming full tilt out of an eight inch pipe.  Imagine a very short girl trying to get a bucket up and over the side of the cement box that the water poured into, and holding on to a five gallon bucket while the water rushed in.  I did it, but I don't know how.  I remember running out to the barn, banging the bucket against my leg, while water slowly trickled out of the hole and more sloshed over the top.  I remember the hot, soft summer dirt and the ever present pokey puncture weeds.  I remember Dad suddenly being there in a hot summer rage. 
Unfortunately for little brother, he carried the full brunt of justice that day.  It was years before he got to touch a match-- a sad, sad punishment for a little boy.  There was a ceremony years later when he was awarded his own box of matches. 
I'm sorry, little brother.  That was really cowardly of us to let you face the punishment by yourself.  I hope you can forgive us.
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Now it's your turn.  Here are three objects for some brave, imaginative person:  a wooden chair, an old photograph, and a backpack.