Building A Greenhouse

There is one big difference between homeschoolers and public school kids. Alright, there are lots of differences. But I’m going to point out one. We don’t get grades. I’m not saying our teacher doesn’t check our work but if we got something wrong we do it again and if we still get it wrong then we do it AGAIN until we do get it right. So, we always get “A’s” as the public school kids would say.

This, despite my beginning isn’t what my story is about but it does have something to do with it.

Our beloved mother loves to garden. This doesn’t mean us kids like it but we do it anyway. So, about February the seed and gardening catalogues start coming in. For years mother has started at this time of year making up “Brilliant” plans. Her brilliant plans have included: Frames for the beds for hoop houses, wires so we don’t have to build more frames, ten feet tall posts with a board over top for sunflowers, which, by the way, are COLD weather plants and DIDN’T need covering after all.

Well, last year she needed something bigger so she decided we were going to build a green house. Yep, build one. You say, okay order the pieces put them together and BANG! you’re done. Nope. We weren’t going to order pieces we were going to do it from scratch. Twenty degrees, freezing wind and frozen ground and guess where we are. Sorry, but you guessed wrong. We weren’t inside drinking hot chocolate, watching something. We’re homeschoolers remember. We were outside, digging holes in the frozen ground and hoping not to freeze to death in what felt like Artic temperatures. Do you blame me for not concentrating and getting my hole a foot off? How was I supposed to know my hole was supposed to be on the inside of the orange rope and on the X? Well, maybe I should have but I didn’t.

After digging holes, putting poles in the ground. Making an entire frame, putting in a door and window, making beds, hauling manure and dragging plastic over a 10x25 foot green house who could help but feel proud? We were proud. Ever hear the saying, “Pride comes before a fall”? Yep, it’s true. The wind came up, grabbed it and shredded the plastic.

Now this is where the first part of this story comes into play. Us homeschoolers are stubborn and didn’t take the hint that this would be close to impossible. We tried again. We pulled plastic over that green house, nailed it down so tight it could not have moved if it was alive and then tied socks around the connecting pieces of the PVC pipes. You might be wondering by now why we use socks for such strange things and I’ll tell you. It’s because we don’t wear them. Mom and Dad do but us kids hate socks. So, we tied them to the connecters so they wouldn’t rub holes in the plastic. That didn’t work. It shredded again. We, no longer having plastic, taped it back together, using duck tape, of course. If you didn’t guess I’ll tell you, IT DIDN’T WORK. So, we spent the summer struggling with this greenhouse and somehow managed to get a good amount of peppers and tomatoes. We still haven’t solved the problem but I’m sure we’ll try again this year. The up side is, this means Mom won’t need a new “brilliant” idea this year.