Heave–Ho!

Relocating a timber frame house may not be so unusual in some parts, as long as you use properly qualified people with the correct equipment and appropriate transport on suitable roadways. A slow and sometimes tricky operation, but not all that impossible.

This weekend Clayton moved our greenhouse, using his muscle power, brute strength and ability to dig in hard rocky ground, and putting up with my sarcastic and hopefully sometimes useful opinion as to whether a particular feature appeared level, straight and horizontal-ish or not. Given the AA’s judgement of the quality of my vision, it is remarkable that the greenhouse is actually still standing right way up!

The greenhouse is a simple-frame lightweight structure made of a galvanised tubular metal and covered with a flexible polycarbonate fabric made for this purpose, a thick translucent plastic sheeting, if you will. It is an average size at 4.8 metres long and 2.4 metres wide.  At a rough guess, the structure had been standing just north of the back of the garage for near on 20 years or so. The time had come for it to be moved in preparation of the planned new veggie garden.

With the assistance of, say, four others (preferably weight-lifting enthusiasts), we could have jacked up the house on three long cross-beams and lifted and carried it pall-bearer-style. But there was no such assistance in the offing. Plan “A” was thus a non-starter.

So, we looked towards our ancient Egyptian ancestors who were in the habit of doing pyramid and sphinx-type stuff. If only we had three dozen three-metre broomsticks, we could roll the building to its new location.

We could roll it on firm hard level ground. But the ground is hilly and bumpy, squishy and soft in places, and we only had one regular-length broomstick.

So that put paid to plan “B.”

Then we devised a cunning scheme. To lift-push-pull the house along a rail-road track of timber. Sort of.

And so it came to pass that this cunning scheme evolved into Plan “C”. Regrettably we had no photographers who could bear witness to the sweat and toil, but I have taken a few shots of the aftermath scenes of the battlefield for posterity.

(Above): Ground Zero, the previous site lays fallow after the departure of the greenhouse, opening a sunny space for future generations of yummy organic veggies…

(Above): One of the “railway lines” of Plan “C” along which the house was lifted/dragged/ pushed to its new location nearer the boundary fence. When we were almost done, we discovered by accident that jamming a sliver of polythene on top of the rail under the greenhouse frame dramatically decreased the pulling effort required!

(Above): The greenhouse stands squarely on its new site nearer the boundary fence. Next we need to attend to its renovation and re-cladding, to fit into the planned new garden precinct.

Farewell to a Friend

Earlier to-day, bearing in mind that overnight we’d had 55 mm of rain (two inches in the ‘old’ language) and that the weatherman was predicting reasonably brrrrr nippy breeze conditions, I walked across the yard to the greenhouse. Now, I know that any man worth his salt has a ‘shed’, in many parts of the world. Here, I do not have a shed, but there is a greenhouse, which is far better – a combination indoor garden, where I can stand up or sit down under relatively dry conditions even in the fiercest of storms, and it doubles as a sort-of ‘workshop’ on an agricultural sense.

Now, the wall cladding to some of the panels is in need of replacement, because of treatment metered out by the Labradors whilst they were still puppies and they believed that they must hunt down and destroy anything that moves in the wind, even side panels to greenhouses. So, we don’t have ideal growing conditions there yet, but a crop of tomatoes and a few Marigolds have survived the last season there.

I started pottering around.

Now, when I was a lad I understood that ‘pottering’ by grand-dad was a euphemistic term which described they way he tried to dodge grand-ma whenever he could, where he could sit and do nothing but smoke and snooze. If asked what grand-dad was doing, without actually knowing the meaning, you’d confidently reply

“He’s pottering down in the shed, I think.”

Potter: I was always under the impression that the word relates to the trade of making clay pots on a potter’s wheel. However, the Free Dictionary defines it as “mess about, fiddle (informal), tinker, dabble, fritter, footle (informal), poke along, fribble.”

So, as I no longer partake in the burning of the tobacco leaf, and I only feel drowsy and sleepy in the late afternoons, the pottering ‘thing’ was a bit of problem for me. Instead, I fetched gardening gloves and secateurs, and set out to remove the hanging tomato planters and the spent dried-out stalks of the 2013/14 tomato plants, snipping them into bite-sized chunks for the compost heap, as well as other past-sell-by-date plants, leaving empty plant containers and seedlings.

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(Above): Empty and damaged greenhouse viewed from the entrance door.

Whilst doing further ‘house-keeping’ in the greenhouse, I stumbled across two critters – nothing unusual for a regular gardener – but, then, as you will be aware, I am not a regular gardener. My interest was caught by a shiny bullet-shaped being in a silken thread. On closer investigation, it turned out to be a sort-of plastic pupa-thingy, but certainly a living being and a shiny living being, at that.

I looked at the pupa-thing and tried to categorise him-her-it. You know, like they do. The scientists are especially good at putting creatures into little boxes, with all sorts of long Latin names to identify them. I like to keep things simple. There are family, friends, and then there are others. Who are they? Are they, by definition, strangers? W.B.Yeats wrote “There are no strangers. Only friends you haven’t yet met.”

Let’s take that one step further. Man’s best friend, the Dog. Is he a “friend”? If so, then I must conclude that friends are not limited to the human sort. And a Cat? and a Budgie? and what about a Gold Fish? and, yes, what about a Silk-Worm.

You can see where this going, can’t you? We live in a world where it’s no longer PC to label people in a manner which may been as degrading. The vertically challenged… you know the rest – a long list. I prefer to label them “friends”, irrespective of what type of creature they are.

Therefore, this pupa-thingy is actually a newly-made friend.

“Hi Pupa-thingy,” I greeted him-her-it, “from now on I will call you ‘Pupa-thingy’ until I learn your official name.”

I took Pupa-thingy’s picture, as pictured above.

I looked at Pupa-thingy, and realised that this bullet-shaped pod will develop into another creature-thing, and eat all our future seedlings and tomatoes and stuff. I paused to consider the probability. Hmmmm.

I pressed my boot on the Pupa-thingy. Greenish juice squirted out and the Pupa-thingy was no longer a thingy. It must have been one of the shortest-lived friendships in history. My newest friend was no longer a friend.