Winter Prep

There was a blog a year-and-a-half ago, or so, about how my kids had purchased a put-it-up-yourself, heavy-duty plastic greenhouse for me to use to protect some plants from the winter weather. And, how I took it down all by myself (and tripped out of it after the last of the supports had been removed). The next fall, they put it up, staked it down, and I put some of my more tender patio plants inside it. Many survived, and, once again, I took the thing down, by myself, the next spring. The first year, I could absolutely not get it folded up and replaced in the large plastic storage bag in which it came. I had just wadded the thing up and shoved it into a small shed we have at the back of the yard. The second year, I did a much better job and it was almost completely in the  bag.

When taking down the plastic greenhouse, I used the construction instructions and just started at the bottom and went through all the stages backwards. The last parts that had been put in place were the first ones that I removed. It went much better the second year.

This fall, we had some early, low temperature weather, and no one was going to be around to erect the little greenhouse. And I was unwilling to haul all those a-little-sturdy-but-also-a-little-vulnerable plants into the house. I just don’t have the surfaces to accommodate them all. And I thought to myself if I can take it down all by myself, then I should be able to put it up by myself. (Sometimes I have a way unreasonable evaluation of my own abilities.)

I got the instructions out, read them, and decided how hard can it be. (Fill in your own ideas in your head about that.)

I put on my overalls and got a jacket and pulled out the instructions for putting up the little greenhouse. Boldly, I went out to the shed, unlocked the door, and pulled out the almost-completely-in-the-storage-bag greenhouse and lugged it up to the house. I pulled the pieces out and read the first step (Unpack the FlowerHouse). Step two was “Take fiberpoles out of pack and assemble them completely.” Then I went back to the shed and found the long, skinny bag that held all the metal pieces that actually hold up the greenhouse.

The next step was to insert the side support poles into small pockets. These side supports, two on each side, make supporting crosses that hold up the sides of the “FlowerHouse.” It just sounded so easy. The problem is that the greenhouse is just a limp pile of heavy-duty plastic. It does not stand up by itself until those poles are installed, so I cannot just stand up inside it and put those poles in place. I worked for almost an hour, pulling and tugging, crawling inside the supportless bundle, trying to find those “small pockets,” and struggling, without success, to poke the ends of the fiberpoles into those “small pockets.” It was the Laurel and Hardy version of putting up a “FlowerHouse.” As far as I know, no neighbor filmed me at work. The neighbors on one side and the back have privacy fences, and the neighbor on the other side has a big hedge, so my struggles weren’t obvious, I suppose, to any of them.

And, there are actually some support pieces permanently installed in the structure. They are at the front and the back of the structure (or, what will be the structure) that support the front and the back panels which also have the doorways, which have heavy-duty-zippers to open and close them. Finally, I solved the problem by hauling the thing to the side of the house and struggling to set one of those end panels up against the bricks of the wall. That enabled me to get inside, sort of, and push plastic away enough that I was able to install the first two fiberpoles (into their small pockets) in an X shape against one side wall. I worked quickly to put the other two in, on the opposite side. And, Ta-Dah! Along with the pre-installed supports at the front and back, everything else was easy-peasy. Ish.

I’m sorry I didn’t carefully note the time I started and when I finished. I know I worked more than an hour, and the amount of time it took to install that first set of poles was about three-fourths of the time I spent on the project. I did hope for very quiet weather for the next twenty-four hours. I didn’t stake the thing down until the next afternoon. A big wind storm might very easily have sent the thing rolling down the street.

I complain, bitterly, about our horrid summer heat. But, really, I think I’d be in really bad shape if I lived someplace where there are blizzards (and more than one during the winter!) and biting winds, and snowplows have to come and rescue people. Once, when Peter was here, I was checking the weather information on my phone. I told Peter to look at the temperature information on the refrigerator, and it said the freezer was 5°. I showed him the temperature in Brooklyn, where Jeremy and Sarah live. It was 7.°  That’s winter. I must stop complaining.