20.11.2023 Greenhouse clearance. Or else!

 ~o~

 Monday 20th 47F/8C. Another wet day is forecast. Up at 6.15. Slept well. Got up once. I was thinking my diet is too greasy. Too much fried stuff. Not nearly enough fruit and vegetables. Not too much meat though. Apart from weekly chicken. The minimum pack size means two meals. 

 The first broccoli I tried was great. The second lot was undercooked and bitter. Salad was a new discovery without access to salad cream. Tasty and interesting when all mixed together. I would still like salad cream. If it was available on the shelves in Danish supermarkets. I tried different mayonnaise but didn't like it much. Another waste of money.

 I have to do something about the logs in the trailer. There wasn't room for them in the greenhouse. So I left half a trailer full with the cover clipped over it. Then it rained. And then tipped down some more. With huge puddles pulling the tarpaulin cover away from the trailer's edge. 

 No doubt some water got inside. Which was really stupid of me. After making such a fuss about dryness of the firewood. Yesterday there was a huge bang outside. The weight of the accumulated rainwater had tipped the tail of the trailer downwards! The tow bar and pilot wheel were up in the air!

 The image below shows the inexcusably, untidy greenhouse a year ago. Warts and all! I lost a lot of the image width due to correcting phone camera lens distortion. There are actually eleven bays of 60cm or 2' in the 22' [6.7m] length. 8' [2.4m]  in width. I'll take a better picture later. If it ever gets light enough today. There might even be a before and after image. 

 My sharing an image of the greenhouse is quite deliberate. Unless I go back and delete everything, so far, I have no choice but to tidy up out there. I am using my few blog readers as virtual visitors. To force myself to actually do something.

 I can't double stack the new logs without blocking the greenhouse door to the drive. So I will finally have to tidy the greenhouse and make room further along. I consider it important not to double handle logs too much. It wastes so much time. I try to load wheelbarrows to bring the logs into the greenhouse. Close to where they will be stacked. Keeping the trailer loads separate avoids taking damp logs indoors. I am still very reluctant to handle the remaining stuff my wife left in the greenhouse. 

 Something must be done out there. Time is just passing without any real progress. It is now over 18 months since my wife died. Yet I am still struggling mentally. When so many of the things I must handle remind me of her. 

 She did not encourage me to go out into the greenhouse. It was packed with junk wood, pots, seed trays, old bamboo furniture and smaller gardening tools. The greenhouse was lined with tattered, white, shower curtains on the walls. To block the hot sun in summer. Equally tattered, lightweight tarpaulins hung from the roof. Loads of flattened cardboard boxes were leaning against the house wall. Perhaps in anticipation of a fantasy house move?

 Because of the hanging tarpaulins I could not stand upright anywhere out there. So it became her private sanctuary. She would sew her seeds in recycled meat trays on the remaining corner of an overloaded, folding table. Which is still there. Doing nothing useful except holding more junk. 

 Today is the day I finally start to make a real effort out there. It is fortunate I have so few visitors. Because the greenhouse is highly visible on the final approach to the house. In my wife's time it was almost completely hidden by towering hedges and ragged tarpaulins. Now all cleared. Except for all the junk on the floor. Much of which is now my own fault. It is forecast to be a wet day so I have no excuse not to do something useful. Instead of only writing about it.

8.15. Misty. Light enough for a short walk. Still 64F/18C in the room. I shan't bother to light the stove yet.

 9.15 Back from my walk. It was quite misty. My nice neighbour and I met and chatted about our respective "new" cars. Then I carried out my usual check of the back field flooding. The beck had gone down a little. So was no longer flooding. The water on the field was higher and covered more ground. Though still well above the beck. So it has the potential to drain that way if a channel should form. Had the beck been higher than the flooding it [the beck] would add to the flooding.

 12.00 I am not sure bringing the rest of the logs in from the trailer is classed as tidying. Though I did remove some boxes and stuff. I folded the table at the far end and put the driest logs in its place. It was obvious that I had a short load of logs from the timber yard. The stack didn't even reach up to the windowsills. My friend is threatening to come over and make me clear everything out. So I'd better finish the job before he visits!😉

 15.00 Light rain, heavy overcast. Lots of stuff to go but the recycling yard is only open on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

15.30 Progress. All sorted but only half empty. The image above doesn't show the stuff ready to go to the recycling yard. There are leaks from every skylight. Drips from the several opening handles. Getting up there to run some silicone is a problem. The drips at the front are due to the curved, plastic shoulder panels. Which age and weather over time. Causing them to leak wind and rain.

 The ants are burrowing under the front of the greenhouse. Undermining the 6"x6" [150x150mm] green oak foundations. Which I replaced at intervals. I found hundreds of my wife's seed labels in a tub on the floor. They have all gone into the bag for plastic recycling.

20.15 41F/5C. Dinner was fish fingers, pasta, peas and tinned tomatoes. 21C/69F in the room all evening.

~o~