Good (non-rainy) Day

We had a lovely day here. There was no rain. It was a bit cloudy and not overly warm, but the lack of rain meant that after church I could: 1. Get some laundry pegged out on the line and 2. Start washing the greenhouses.

I got the small green house washed today. Had I skipped Mass then I could have had most of the glass in the large greenhouse a good way to being clean but George was on the rota to be alter boy today.

During my lunch break I also had a nice nap on the sofa. All in all the perfect Sunday. Here is the now clean little greenhouse. This small greenhouse doesn't have any staging or shelves in it. The reason for no shelves in here is that this is the greenhouse I use for growing tomatoes and tender herbs like basil and coriander (cilantro). Shelves would get in the way. I'm also going to try growing a cucumber and some peppers in here this year and see how we get on. When the weather allows I'll move all those pots outside. The bags of compost will be gone (used up) and the garden canes leaning on the back wall will be turned into bean frames with the gift of garden twine. This leaves the little greenhouse empty and ready for the summer crops.

Cleaning the large greenhouse needs a full day of no wind and rain so that I can get a good running start at the job. You can see why I need a full day by looking at the state of the glass. This is a photo of one of the bottom panes on the north side of the large greenhouse (delphinium seedlings in the foreground). Glass should be see through and this glass is plainly not transparent.

I did manage to clean the gutters of the large greenhouse and reposition the spouts. Now the rain barrels will fill up more quickly. Some of the plants I have growing in the greenhouse are acid loving plants and will not thank me for watering them with tap water. Our water here at the house is pretty soft, but rainwater is even softer.Here is the rain barrel or water butt with the repositioned spout above it. Note the coating of green on the barrel. This green stuff is everywhere and will even start showing up on the car if it isn't washed for any lengthy period of time. The green coating is what I have to wash off the glass on the greenhouses. We have it on the house as well. Over the summer at some point we will have to pressure wash the house. I scrub the back step from time to time to prevent the build up of this green stuff and its evil cousin, slime mold. When I scrub the back step, I occasionally add in a bit of bleach to keep it from coming back quite so quickly.

Here is documentation of some of the seedlings inside the large greenhouse:
The Sprouting Broccoli - Sown last Sunday -
A fuzzy photo of the tomato plants. The purple tinge on the leaves of these little plants is the tomato plant's way of telling me that they got too cold. I may invest in a little greenhouse heater for next year.The Sweet Peas which can go out any time now.The Sweet Corn - I have most of it in deep single cells that can go straight into the ground once the threat of frost has passed.One corn plant in a little cell.

It is now Sunday evening. I'm tired and have very dirty fingernails. I'm off for a well deserved soak in the tub.