Planting in Whimsy

LE and I were both so excited to have a greenhouse to start our plants in come Spring of 2024. I was beside myself, thinking I was going to be a "real" gardener and start things from seed!

LE found an old cart in her shed, and bought everything we needed to start our garden in the greenhouse. We spent a delightful afternoon, scooping soil, tenderly placing seeds, and labeling. 

LE's perfect little garden cart.

LE placing the labels and getting ready to mist the soil.

LE had lots of things she wanted to start, but I only had one thing in mind: San Marzano tomatoes. Jay uses San Marzanos when he makes his marinara and I wanted to grow some. Over the summer of 2023, while we were building Whimsy, I had planted four of them, but they struggled and I got less than a quart bag of 'maters for the freezer. I was determined to do better in '24.

I did not do better. 

Turns out, while I intended Whimsy to be a greenhouse, and she had lots of windows and happiness, she still wasn't warm enough over night to help our seeds germinate.

A day or two after we planted the seeds, LE ended up having to take them into her house and put them in a sunny window.

I decided right then and there that we needed a potting shed!

Even LE's life-saving measures of taking the trays of seed into the house weren't enough to salvage most of what we planted. 

Nebalee wanted a San Marzano, so I planted one and gave it to her. It didn't have time to fail in Whimsy, and it ended up being an amazing plant for her - she got tons of tomatoes from it. 

Nebalee's San Marzanos produced and produced!

Ours? Never germinated.

We ended up having to buy plants - a huge failure in my eyes. I was determined to grow from seed. I mean, it's a necessary skill for the zombie apocalypse, right? How am I going to feed myself and have food to barter with if I have to buy seedlings from a store?

I found someone nearby who had managed to start some from seed.

They loved living in Whimsy for a bit

I got a few 'maters until Blossom End Rot got them.
I guess I loved these guys a little too much, too. 

Welcome to LE's Enchanted Tomato Jungle!
Her tomato seedlings grew like wildfire!

Tomatoes weren't the only thing I wanted to grow from seed. I had some amazing corn and popcorn I wanted to grow, but that was a direct sow into the ground, and I waited until after Mother's Day to plant those.

I'd also decided that I wanted to grow sunflowers to pretty up our propane tank. There had been irises there, but they hadn't come up in the last couple of years, so I went ahead with the sunflowers.

I did okay with the direct sowing. I got a few ears of corn from the sweet corn I'd planted, and the sunflowers came up. 

You can see the holes in the leaves from the plague of locusts
(okay, they were grasshoppers, but same thing).

Why grow yellow sweet corn when you can grow
Blue Jade sweet corn?

I even managed to keep the concord grapes alive, and planted some kiwi berries that managed to live through the summer. Only time will tell if the kiwi berries wintered well.

The Gremlin is the cutest garden helper

Kiwi berries

I wasn't a complete gardening failure.

Maybe my black thumb is trending toward brown. 

Um, What?!

On August 2, 2022, I got a mysterious message from Digger. He wanted to come over for dinner. That, in and of itself, isn't mysterious. It was the ominous, "I've got something to tell you" followed by Ashee messaging me to see if Digger had talked to me yet that made me wonder what was going on.

He was obviously nervous about telling me something, which was very weird. My kids and I have been through some shit together, and I couldn't think of a single thing he could possibly be afraid to tell me. Seriously. What could he possibly have done that was so bad that he was afraid to tell me? And that he had to go to his siblings for support before coming to me? I finally coerced him to just spit it out.

And, oh my, I did not see it coming.

He finally found the nerve to tell my that Jay and I were grandparents. Not going to be grandparents. Were grandparents. 

Wait...what?

We'd had false alarms in the past with Digger, and Monster had a daughter who we've never met (that's a whole other story for another time). As far as I knew, Digger wasn't dating anyone, and hadn't since his previous girlfriend a year ag...oh.

Now, I know my boys are man-whores with questionable taste in women, but I thought I'd taught them all about birth control. I drilled it into their heads when they were younger. I even bought a box of condoms for all the kids to use, and left it under the bathroom counter. I told them that if they or their friends needed more, to just let me know, I'd refill it, no questions asked. I told them all about Planned Parenthood and that if they didn't want to come to me for more condoms, they could swing by and pick some up for free from there. Hell, I'd even offered to take Digger's high school girlfriend to PP to get birth control if her parents wouldn't.

I didn't condone my teenagers having sex, but I was also realistic about the world we lived in. Just because I managed to get through high school a virgin didn't mean my kids were going to do the same, even if that's what I'd prefer. On the flip side, I also told them not to marry the first person they slept with (like I did) and that if they ever got pregnant out of wedlock that I'd forbid them from getting married. Marrying just because someone got pregnant accidentally rarely works out well. I want my kids to marry for love, not because they got knocked up.

Apparently, Digger's ex had gotten pregnant before they broke up, but didn't realize it. Once she did, she hid the pregnancy and birth from him. Digger only found out because their mutual friends got tired of covering for her and threatened to tell him if she didn't. She finally told him about Gremlin when he was three months old.

Finding out he was a dad shook Digger's world. He's always been great with kids, and we knew he'd be a fantastic uncle if his sibs ever decided to have children. He, however, had never planned on having kids because of his disease. From the time he turned 16, he'd been determined to get a vasectomy to avoid passing his genetic burden on to any of his children. He never got around to the vasectomy, and obviously the lesson about always using condoms didn't stick, so now we have Gremlin.

We hurriedly arranged a baby shower, and everyone got to meet the newest member of the family. Digger had met him in his ex's presence a couple of times prior to the baby shower, but this was the first time the rest of us got our hands on the little one.

Look at how in love Digger is!

This was one of the few times Beel got to meet his greatgrandson.

When Grandma Nita died, our family went from four living generations to three. It was very odd. My entire life, we'd always had more than the normal number of living generations. When Digger and Ashee-butt were born, we had five. When Great-grandma Wheeler died, we were down to four. We hung out with four generations for decades, and Grandma Nita was determined to live to see five again. 

Sadly, that didn't happen, and we dropped down to three, with the Bionic Cowgirl as the matriarch.

Now, we're back up to four.

Whimsy's Complete-ish

The lower windows were a breeze to put in, even if the windows on the north required some tetris-like puzzle solving. After that, we had to put in the upper windows. We'd designed a rather dramatic pitch to the roof so that the snow could slide off, but that left us with triangle shaped gaps on the east and west side of Whimsy that needed windows installed.

The mounting block served double duty as my stepstool.

Jay and I had found these amazing hinged windows that I wanted to install for air movement. Even without all of the windows in, Whimsy was holding a lot of heat during the day. Mom and I hung the first window, and built the frame around it. As you can see from the ratchet strap securing the window, that didn't work out so well.

Back to the drawing board. We took out the window and built a frame that would fit the space and hold all of the windows. Who knew doing it the correct way would be easiest?

The frame secured the hinged windows much better - no ratchet straps required!

I hung curtains in an attempt to keep the heat down.

We were left with odd shapes that would need to be filled in with something. Mom did some research and learned how to cut glass. It's stupidly simple, but also stupidly easy to break the glass when you get too cocky. I thought stained glass windows would look gorgeous on Whimsy, but the cost, plus the odd sizes meant that stained glass wasn't going to be an option. Bionic Cowgirl to the rescue again! While picking up the pieces of glass from the craft store, she happened upon some stencils and picked them up.

We measured the openings carefully, drew out what we needed on graph paper, and went to town on making our own windows. It was fun.

When it came time to put the windows up, I realized that even though we measured carefully, we didn't take into account the fact that we'd need some "wiggle room" to seat the windows without breaking them. Cutting glass is easy. Trimming already cut glass by 1/4" is not and I broke more than one window trying.

You can see where I scored the glass, and then it broke as I was trying to snap it off.

Dang it! Back to the craft store for more glass.

Eventually, I managed to get all of the east and west side windows in. It was definitely the most difficult part of the whole build.

I accidentally painted on the wrong side of the window,
so I slapped some Mod-Podge on it to protect it from the weather.

I broke the big window, so I just cut off the broken part,
cut a new end piece and framed it in.

Whimsy had complete windows in three sides, but I needed to do something with the upper windows on her south side. It was evident that in the summer, she gathered a lot of heat, and I didn't think that adding more glass was going to be a great idea. Instead, above each large window, I stretched some screen material across and installed solar-powered fans. The fans were smaller than I expected, but they've worked beautifully for moving air. They worked well enough that I bought a third one to use in our bedroom window during the summer.

Whimsy had everything except a door.

I had been stalling when it came to a door for Whimsy. I figured at worst, I could make one out of plywood (gross). I had a few windows left that we hadn't been able to find a home for, but I was in love with two of them and had to figure out how to use them.

I played around with the idea of turning them into a Dutch door. The more I thought about it, the more I fell in love with the idea. 

Did I have any clue whatsoever of how to build a Dutch door? Nope.

Had I any clue how to build a greenhouse when we started? Nope.

Why would I let a little thing like not knowing how to do something stop me? So I set about hanging the windows, one above the other to make my door.

I still needed to build up the frame on the right.

If you look closely, you can see the pomegranates.

Since not a thing on Whimsy is square, her door frame is more of a Franken-frame, but it works. I'll probably spend some time this summer fixing the frame so that it looks better. It was October before we got her door installed, and cold weather was right around the corner. I couldn't get my idea for the Dutch door to work the way I wanted it to, and we were running out of good weather. Jay and I just put a piece of wood across the inside of the door to join the two windows together and called it good.

The window above the door was the very last one of what we'd picked up at the beginning of the project and was the perfect size for above the door. With the big screens on each side of the door, I didn't feel bad about putting in more glass. But ... Whimsy needed something to finish her off (besides finishing the paint job). I had an idea for just the thing!

Mrs. Deejo has every craft tool known to (wo)man and I drew on her expertise to make Whimsy and the pomegranate girls signs.

I hung heavy duty plastic over the screens and all of the big windows, added a thick layer of mulch to the girls' tires, and covered it with black trash bags. Whismy and the girls were as ready for Winter 2023 as they could be.

I Loved Them a Little Too Much

I was desperate to do everything just right for Natasha and Yelena. I protected them as well as I could over the winter, going so far as to buy a gas generator and heat lamp for Whimsy to keep them warm.

Doesn't she look amazing?

March 2024 came along, and things started warming up. After we'd had a run of days in the 60s, it felt like the world was going to warm up. I had read that the prime time to trim pomegranates was early spring. I've never pruned a thing in my life, but I went ahead and trimmed back the branches by 1/3 as directed. 

Except ...

The branches were dried out and looked dead, so I trimmed back a little more over time, trying to find the living plant tissue.

And, well, have you ever tried to trim your own bangs? You know how that turns into an absolute disaster?

Yeah, well ...

My sister-in-law gave me these amazing plant signs, and they were so fitting!

Even though I loved Natasha and Yelena, even I had to consider that I'd loved them too much and trimmed them back far enough to possibly kill them. I hoped against hope that they'd be able to recover, but I'm also a realist and so I ordered two new plants. At best, I'd end up with four pomegranate plants, at worst, I'd have two.

I ordered from a different nursery, for no other reason than their ad popped up somewhere. I ordered the 3 gallon size this time, instead of the 1 gallon, thinking that the larger size and age would give them a better fighting chance. My Marvel superhero names had apparently failed, but these new girls were going to have to be superhero badasses as well, so I flipped to DC and named them after the Amazons: Diana Prince (Wonder Woman), and her Aunt Antiope.

I got super excited when I found some green growth in both Natasha and Yelena's tires, and dared to hope that they were rebounding. I kept a really close eye on the shoots and went to Google images to see if they matched a "newborn" pomegranate.

Google images gave me so much hope!

While I was hoping and praying that Natasha and Yelena would make it through their hack job, I was doing my best to keep my Wonder Women alive. Both Diana and Antiope had a bit of transplant shock, and I get it! They came from a beautiful greenhouse in Georgia, only to end up in Colorado. Diana came through beautifully. Antiope threw a temper tantrum and refused to live in Colorado's cold, dry climate.

"I don't wanna, and you can't make me!"

I kept an eye on Natasha and Yelena, but was more than a little disappointed when my "pomegranate shoots" turned out to be weeds. I was sure they couldn't possibly be weeds, since I had planted soil straight from the bag in to the tires, and there was commercial grade weed barrier under the tires. The green stuff just had to be baby pomegranates.

This is NOT a pomegranate! Stupid weeds.

I yanked the weeds out in anger, but I wasn't quite ready to give up yet. So I kept fertilizing and watering the stumps that were formerly Natasha and Yelena. My effort paid off! Yelena hatched an honest-to-God branch.

Natasha did not. I finally had to admit to myself that I'd killed her.

RIP Natasha, I tried.

I dug up Natasha and found that her taproot had been dead a while. She had a couple of baby roots that were still kind of hanging in there, but the taproot was a goner. Luckily, Diana was doing well, she rebounded nicely and even popped a few little blossoms.

As pretty as Diana's blossoms were, I didn't let her keep them. She needed to work on growing herself, not fruits. I enjoyed them for a couple of days, then pinched them off.

Yelena's little off-shoot shriveled up and died by the middle of July, so I prepared myself to say goodbye to her as well. However, when I went to dig her up, I realized that her taproot was still full of life. I gave her a quick dunking in root hormone and covered her back up with a promise to leave her be until at least June of this year. She may yet pull through.

My biggest take-away from this learning experience is to not name my plants after superheroes that died in the movies. Seriously, I loved Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow), but she up and sacrificed herself for the greater good. Antiope sacrificed herself to save Diana.