foggy Monday

A cool, foggy day with a bit of rain. Just right for the garden.I still feel as if I don't have the garden rhythm down, yet. Maybe that will take a few years.
The peas and the mustard and lettuces and chard and potatoes are all coming along, though.
Maybe next year I'll only grow peas and mustard and lettuces and chard and potatoes.
Something is stealing away the strawberries just at the moment of their ripening. I wonder what it could be. I hung some of the herring net over the berry bed, thinking the incursion was the work of my usual suspects, the birds. But I must have been wrong. The strawberry thief --whoever it is --slips right through the net, no doubt with a superior sort of smile on its little face. Perhaps it has magical powers. Certainly it possesses an excellent sense of timing.I'm trying to grow tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and cucumber in old five-gallon plastic pails in the greenhouse. I'm curious to see how that will go.

I've got some oregano and basil in there, too.

While I was in the garden some ewes and lambs came into the back orchard. I become invisible to them when I'm behind the garden fence, so it's easy to spy on them from there.
They were feeling peaceful, anyway, with their mother nearby, and didn't mind my watching them.

In fact, they were curious enough to stop what they were doing -- eating -- and watch me watching them.

in the greenhouse

Last summer Greg built a greenhouse. Then it sat there, waiting for the time to be right. I whitewashed the glass with a mixture of water and hydrated lime, which we have already because hydrated lime is also something you need in the outhouse. (Well, yes, we do still have an outhouse.) Hydrated lime is now on my list of very useful things I never knew anything about until we came to the island. Also whitewashing.
This spring Greg made a bunch of trays out of leftover wood. The bottoms are made out of leftover sheet metal, so they sort of retain moisture. I began by putting the trays on the lower shelves, then after the seeds sprouted I moved them to the upper shelves.
Here's what I hope: the greenhouse will give these babies a head start in their upcoming wrestling match with hungry insects. The bugs will be so daunted when they finally come face to face with all this enormous size and powerful greenness that they will just throw up their hands and slink away in abject surrender. Victory for chard! Anyway, that's what I hope.

Greens from the greenhouse

I didn't think we could grow anything in our unheated greenhouse this winter. But just to see what would happen, I planted a few seeds in late September: some chard, and mustard, and mesclun. I kept them watered when I remembered.
Now, it's nothing to brag about if some seeds you planted turn into teeny tiny greens after nearly three months. But, anyway, they did. Even though lately we have have very cold days and nights, with lots of icy wind -- the kind that cuts through anything. So my conclusion is that this little greenhouse will stand up to a lot more bad weather than I had thought.

Beginning tomorrow we will be away for a while. So I went ahead and harvested our baby greens. A whole small bowlful for our supper tonight.

The completed greenhouse

The greenhouse is finished.Its door was originally a large window in Roseway Hall.
The shingles and the four big gable-end pieces of glass were the biggest expense. Altogether the cost was a little under two hundred dollars.
There are three work counters inside. With shelves beneath the two side ones.
And plenty of work space. This won't be a heated greenhouse, so it will be useful primarily for starting seeds in the spring, growing seedlings to transplant into the garden when the time is right. It feels very luxurious to have such a place.

Greg made a sign for the greenhouse, to remind us of its connections with other places: Roseway Community Hall, across the harbour in the village of Roseway, and Cape Roseway Lighthouse here on the island.

Project greenhouse continued

The greenhouse is all trimmed out.

After much thought on the subject, Greg decided how to frame the gable windows.
He will cut the smaller four triangular windows himself, and he had the larger four windows cut at the local hardware store yesterday.
He caulked the entire building.
He primed the trim boards and put a finish coat on the windows and trim.
This morning the greenhouse is gleaming.

Building the greenhouse

The greenhouse project is moving right along. I particularly love the steep angle of the roof.
A roof window on each side is hinged for venting. Greg brought the wrought iron hinges with him when we moved here. They were left over from a house restoration project he did in Delaware.
The walls are recycled tongue and groove lumber.
So far the greenhouse has cost nine dollars for four new panes of glass, and about seventeen dollars for half a box of those nails that a power hammer uses. Labour being free.

Building a greenhouse

Greg saw a little greenhouse in a backyard in Ingomar. He came home and drew a picture of it.

"I think I can make something like that," he said.

He started with the windows we had taken out of Roseway Hall last spring. He repaired and sanded each frame. He replaced broken panes, and glazed all of them. He primed and painted all the frames.

There are twenty two windows, and a door-like window that he will make taller and turn into a door.

He went down to the shore and got gravel for the floor and flat rocks for the foundation.

He got the 2x4s and some very nice other lumber from someplace on the island. They were in buildings that were abandoned a quarter century ago. This reminds me of the dissolution of the monasteries in sixteenth century England. After the monasteries were left empty and useless, local villagers scavenged their stones and wooden beams for their own building projects.

Greg's greenhouse is in the same tradition: let nothing go to waste! Come to think of it, some of those scavenging English villagers were probably Greg's ancestors. It's in his DNA.