Welcome to My Greenhouse!

It's been a long story. But as you know, I love long stories. Long stories lend themselves to the serialization that makes blogs such fun to follow. Long stories come around and circle back on themselves and if everything goes right there will be a satisfying conclusion. There's not much I love more than a long story with a satisfying conclusion. 

It all started in on June 29, 2012, with that mighty storm that blew my Garden Pod away.

And the story continued with the construction of the Rion Prestige Greenhouse kit we ordered to replace it. It all looked so simple, so doable, so procedural. First, you prepare the ground, then you build the roof...

making extra efforts to assemble the profile, because "Caution: extra efforts while inserting the profile might needed to keep the profile in its place for the greenhouse's life."

What's a profile? We never figured that out. But we got the extra efforts thing covered.

I used a scissors to force the rubber weatherstrip into a tiny channel between the window and the frame. You had to use great pressure, moving the scissors along about a centimeter at a time, groaning loudly the whole way because your biceps were about to burst. If things went really well, you didn't stab yourself, and you might be able to get rubber in two or three of the window sides.

  I've just concluded my fourth weatherstripping session. Each window took me a half hour to weatherstrip. If I could do it at all. Many of the windows were so ill-fitting that they couldn't be weatherstripped. Those, I had to plug with strips of foam insulation board. Those hand-sized gaps we've heard so much about. Phhhhh. You can see the board in the lower left corner of the photo above.

 Count 'em, do the math, and weep. That's me, kneeling over a coil of "ruber guard," seeing how many windows I have to weatherstrip. Oh, and there's the front and doors, too. Contrary to the directions, which wordlessly and inexplicably advocate a toolless approach, there is no way in Hades you could force that stuff in those tiny cracks with your fingers. Unless you are a cyborg with titanium fingers, and bleed sparks instead of blood.

Before we leave the instructions, another page that filled us with despair. Just for fun. Maybe there are people who dig the challenge of deciphering this kind of stuff. Me and Bill, not so much. We're sort of throw-the-manual aside and git-r-dun types. But we changed our act for this effort. We pored over those diagrams, to what avail I'm not sure.

But eventually we got something that resembled the picture in the 44-page book. 

And despite some very strong winds of 40 or more mph, it is still standing in the backyard. You can't see inside it because of the condensation running down the walls. It is one WET greenhouse.

And the doors haven't blown off.

And when I open them up, something very nice happens inside me.

I feel myself leafing out, like this poor tortured tangerine orange hibiscus that to all appearances died in the cold garage. I have a feeling it will bloom again.

I step inside and yodel, "HELLO DAHLINGS!"

and my plants holler "HELLO MILADY!"

and I heave a happy sigh looking at the paddle plant (a kind of kalanchoe) which is blooming its fool head off. And the fishhook cactus which never has in 22 years, but might someday. Plants like to surprise you.

And the hot pink Graffiti geranium that will soon be joined by flowers of all kinds (that's Vancouver Centennial, a Victorian dwarf geranium, on the right).

There are three chairs inside for those mugs of afternoon tea and those sunset moments when you just need to be in drippy warm humidity and around something green and growing, however modest.

The watering cans are warming by the heater so my dahlings get a nice tepid drink when they're thirsty because nobody likes freezing cold water on their feet in the winter.

You just wait. There's going to be a riot of color in here, and when the poor shocky yellowing poet's jasmine kicks in with its ethereal musky fragrance, the greenhouse will have arrived. Even now, it's dropping leaves, but it's budding, too. Kind of like me in midwinter.

That's my giant rosemary tree, the third one I've grown, on the left. She donates many leaves to roasts, soups and spiced pecans.

Now that we've got the zillion heat-escape holes mostly stopped up with bits and strips of foam insulation and weatherstrip, and it's reliably pretty warm inside, I promise to bring you back throughout the winter, into my new little Xanadu where there's always a piece of summer thriving.

                         
                            Not that I need it or anything. Everything worth having must be worked for, no?