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Home » Day in the life » Garden Stories and Memories » life stories » Peripherals: The Greenhouse

Peripherals: The Greenhouse

| 1 Comment


Not having weighed in here for a little while, it was time!

A household is so much more than the shell of the house itself, there are furnishings, interiors and exteriors, and there are the out buildings, which I am calling the “peripherals”, here. Nowadays, even the garage is connected to the main house, so we don’t think too much about peripherals, but in olden times these outbuildings were important. Think about it: the barns, the chicken coops, the summer kitchens… wow, the outhouse! Most of these were connected to an agricultural mode of living, but sometimes we have our own need for “little buildings”.

I’ve always been the garden nut around here, but in light of the present economy our focus has turned towards a greater sufficiency for good food. Thus, the addition of a small green house!

Just like having a computer and realizing, hey, a pair of headphones would be nice, a printer is really useful… the outbuildings serve the same purpose of expanding the household’s capabilities. We didn’t have to have a greenhouse, but in a cold climate it sure will be nice for starting plants that need a jump on the season. I always thought green houses and conservatories were pretty, anyway.

We also learned that important lesson on silicone caulk, too. Handyman can tell you more about that in the future, because he just finished the onerous job of cleaning out the faulty caulk from one of the windows that blew out during a recent storm- the ‘non-setting’ of the expired caulk just wasn’t going to hold against the kind of winds we experience around here. So one down and numerous ones to go….
Remember to check the expiration date on that silicone caulk before you buy!!!

Right now I am very happy with the little green house and have started to use it, despite the fact that I have to figure out a way to shade it through the summer months. It gets full sun and heats up quickly. A framework of removable screening (lathe fencing) is going up around it soon.

Tool sheds, gazebos, all sorts of out buildings get added as time goes by.

life stories+ out buildings+ the yard Ilona Erwin

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Pamela says

    February 17, 2010 at 2:23 pm

    You can also buy shade cloth to cover you g-house with. I use one on my g-house and find it very helpful. They have different shade strengths usually expressed in percentages such as 20%, %0% ect. They also have life expectancies so you need to read the fine print. But for house such as ours (I have one similar to yours) they are easy to put on and take off and I find mine to be worthy of the expense and effort.

    ttp://www.greenhousemegastore.com/Shade-Cloth/departments/1117/?gclid=CMy7gPnI-Z8CFQcNDQodFEAXbA

    Just one source (I have no affiliation with this source) you can see my greenhouse with it’s sliver cloth in place on my blog.

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I still love writing, gardening, and art after all these years, although travel and grandchildren have become a big part of my life, now.

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