Santa Arrives with Our Greenhouse!

Merry Christmas to us! Our new Cedar-Built Greenhouse has arrived! Ordered the first week of September... expected to arrive late October... came yesterday, Dec. 13th, in a snowstorm, of course.  The "...between 2 and 4 pm..." delivery time turned out to be at 12:30 just as I was getting in my car to go to my December Quilt Club.  "I'm at the intersection of Rt.219 and 39," said the truck driver. Yikes! That's 5 minutes away, and there is no one here to unload, but me! Twenty minutes later, after some hasty phone calls, DH, his brother, and another nice strong 20-year-old with a pickup truck came to my rescue.

We live on a little dead-end side street, so the semi-truck had to back down our street to the end of our driveway. Six large and very heavy crates needed to move from the back of the semi, up our driveway, and into the garage.  No automatic lift-gate in this truck; it would take strong backs and pure muscle to do the job.  We needed a plan.  First crate: let's balance it on the garden wagon, and pull it to the garage with the lawn tractor. Okay, that kind of worked, but that was the smallest crate.  Can we get the larger ones onto that little wagon?

Thank goodness for Joe, the 20 year-old, and his pickup truck.  New plan: let Joe back up to the semi. Move the crates, one by one, into the pickup bed, and drive them into the garage.  "Now we're cooking... Don't drop'em boys... "  Thirty minutes, and a couple pinched fingers later the transfer was complete.  Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you, brother and friend! There's no way we could have done it without you.

Off I went to my Quilt Club, and DH spent the rest of the afternoon uncrating the greenhouse.  Of course, this means we will only be able to park 1 of our 2 cars in the garage.  One car (my car) will be sitting out in the snow until the greenhouse gets built.  (I see a lot of snow scraping in my future. Ugh!) 

The next step in this greenhouse adventure will be staining all the wooden pieces - no small task. I'm usually the painter of the family, so I've offered to take this on.  The garage can be heated, so as long as I can bear the fumes, I can get to it any time. My goal is to do a little at a time, but to have it finished in 1 month.  There's no real rush; it's not like we can beat the snow anymore. If our present winter weather continues as is throughout the season, we will be looking at a March greenhouse raising at the earliest.  Stay tuned:)

Cedar greenhouse- all in pieces waiting to be stained.

A Greenhouse - Our Big Fall Project!

OK, so we've been thinking and dreaming about it for a while.  My husband has gardened in the basement for the last 5 or 6 years.  We've decided it would be a gift to both of us, so.... we took the plunge and have ordered our greenhouse.  It's to be a cedar-built greenhouse, fully insulated.  Not too big - 8' by 10'.  We don't know if we can really grow throughout the winter, but will give it a try.  For sure, it will extend our growing season.  We are dealing with a company out of British Columbia, Canada (not too far north of Seattle, Washington).  At least they should know something about cold weather. Here's their web-site: http://cedarbuilt.homestead.com/

Example photo from their web-site

Now, it's time for us to get to work.  The greenhouse should arrive in about 8 weeks, or sometime during the first part of November.  We want it up before the snow flies.  We've monitored the sun in our backyard all summer to choose the best location.  With consideration of both the hours of sunlight and of being non-intrusive to other uses of our yard, we settled on the very spot of the pine tree which was struck by lightening last year.  The tree must come down. (Yea! This is actually a good thing. There are 2 pine trees on our back property line and I'm not a fan of either.) Our friend Ray, of the Good Neighbor Tree Service, had both pine trees down and ground up in less than 1 hour.  Wow, that was fast.  Now we're just waiting for his partner to come and grind away the stumps.  Ray left us the pine chips to spread on the blueberries and flower beds next spring.  I asked him to dump the chips right on some black-cap bushes that I've been unsuccessfully trying to eradicate.  There - take that, you berry brambles.

Note the 2 pine trees on the right.  Both are now gone; greenhouse will replace the tree closer to the house.

My husband is off to get the building permit as I type. Then we need to create the base.  Yes, we've lined up help for that also.  We're suppose to be able to put this greenhouse up ourselves, kind of like "Lincoln Logs", but so far we're asking for a lot of help.  I'll definitely keep the blog updated on this.

Pine trees are down.  Chips are smothering berry brambles. Stumps are awaiting grinding.