The Whimsical Treehouse

Pretty quickly after we started working on the greenhouse, we started calling it the treehouse, since it was going to house the pomegranate trees. Also, the treehouse's personality came out, and she's definitely a she.

The big panes of glass that Mom brought down from the Lodge were the easiest windows to install. We had some help from the boys, and it went quickly. 

What took the most time was finding other windows to use. Facebook Marketplace was my savior. I found free windows in LaPorte that Mom and I picked up, and then I found a few really cool old windows in Cheyenne for cheap. I picked up a few others here and there along the way.

The freebies were a great find, but they were a bunch of different sizes.

We went shopping at LE Depot and found some planks to fill in the gaps.

In order to seal the cracks in the pallets, I used spray foam. As you can tell, I am a pro at it.

Fitting the windows in was like putting a puzzle together.

By the time we were putting the windows in the north side of the treehouse, it was July. Natasha and Yelena had moved into their home in May, so we were working around them. I'd also planted some tomatoes in 5 gallon buckets, and some concord grapes in tires Mom and I found along the road one day.

Free is good, right?

One day, I was lamenting to LE that the treehouse didn't look quite like I'd imagined, with its windows of all shapes and sizes. She told me that she loved it, that it was "whimsical", and just like that The Whimsical Treehouse was born. We are definitely a nickname family, so the greenhouse's name got shortened to Whimsy rather quickly. 

Pomegranates in Colorado?

 As soon as we got back from Italy, I started researching growing pomegranates. I quickly realized that they don't grow in Colorado. But ... there is a video of someone in the Denver area who had successfully grown a pomegranate bush in his greenhouse. If he could do it, so could I!

Never mind that I have essentially a black thumb. Where there's a will, there's a way. I'd discussed building a greenhouse with Mom and Beel, and they were enthusiastically on-board. Sadly, their accident happened just a couple of months after we returned from Italy, and the idea sat on the back burner for a few months. As Mom healed up, I dusted off the idea again and floated it by her. She agreed it would be a good, healing project, so I started looking up where I would even buy them. LE had received a live plant as a gift through the mail that winter. It never occurred to me that plants could be shipped through the mail! I've lived a non-existent, sheltered gardening life, apparently.

I found a nursery in Georgia that had Russian 26 cold hardy pomegranates in stock and would ship to Colorado. Poms don't necessarily need a second plant to produce fruit, but I felt better ordering two plants. I figured I had a better chance of keeping at least one alive if I ordered two. It's black thumb math.

I was so excited to get this box!

Once I received my plants, I decided they needed names. I settled on Marvel's Black Widows, Natasha and Yelena, because these Russian girls were going to have to be complete badasses to live with me.

Natasha arrived with a little bloom.

Since it was still April, and cold, our mudroom wasn't exactly the right place for the girls right off the bat. The instructions said I could keep them in a cool, dark place until ready to plant. I enlisted LE's help, and the girls went to her basement for a couple of weeks.

They did really well in her basement, but I was anxious to get them into 5 gallon buckets and start hardening them off. Once the overnight temperatures evened out, I planted them in their respective buckets and moved them into the mudroom. During the day, they lived outside, and at night I brought them in.

By May, they were showing new growth.

The pinecones are to discourage the cats from digging.

As soon as the greenhouse was complete enough, the girls moved into their forever homes. We'd just have to continue work on the greenhouse around them. It made for a big ole pain in the ass sometimes, but my babies need to go home.

If you look closely, you can see Yelena in her white bucket.

Throughout the summer, work continued on the greenhouse and the Russian girls thrived.

Pomegranate plants are actually bushes, but can be trimmed to be trees. I was determined to have pomegranate trees, so once they started growing enough to need a cage, I braided their main branches together to train them into a trunk. What I could not bring myself to do was snip off any suckers or buds along the "trunk", so eventually Yelena ended up with a random arm.

The girls had been growing steadily all spring and summer, but when August hit, they exploded! It seemed like they grew inches every day from mid-August through September.

If you look toward the base of her trunk, you'll see a branch sticking out.

As it began to cool off, growth slowed, and they began dropping their leaves for hibernation. I was elated that I'd kept them alive through the summer and that they thrived! The next big step was to keep them alive through hibernation. I tucked them in with plenty of mulch, insulated the pallet walls with bubble wrap and black trash bags to gather the heat, and hung heavy plastic over the windows and open screens to hold as much heat as possible and prayed. 

I was confident enough to ask Mrs. Deejo to put her craft skills to work, though, and make name stickers for each of the girls' windows.

Throughout the winter, I kept an eye on the temp in the greenhouse. I had a remote sensor that I put Yelena's tire, sitting on her soil, so I could watch to make sure it didn't drop below 10*F. I even bought a heat lamp and gas-powered generator for the inevitable below zero cold snap.

I'd done all I could, now we just had to wait for spring.

The Greenhouse

Holy cow, it's been a LONG time! I started this post in September of '23 and am just now getting back to it. Frankly, my posting had been pathetic prior to my parents' accident, and basically non-existent after that. I'm feeling the itch to write again, so here I am! Friends, we have so much to get caught up on!

Jay and I took an amazing trip to Germany and Italy in September of  '22. One of the things I was surprised to learn was how pomegranates were grown. They're one of my favorite fruits in the whole world, but I never gave a thought about where they came from, or how they're grown. 

This was taken at our agriturismo in Tuscany

I became obsessed with the thought of growing pomegranates for myself, and started researching them. They don't really grow in Colorado, but there is one variety, the Russian 26, that is fairly cold tolerant, down to 10*F. I found one instance of someone growing a pomegranate in the Denver area, in his greenhouse, and I became determined to do the same.

I knew the pomegranates would need protection from the cold in the winter, so I had the grand idea of building a greenhouse out of old windows. I'd seen pictures on social media and became obsessed with the idea.

I mean, who *wouldn't* want something like this?

Before Mom and Bill's accident, I even talked it over with them, because I knew that Bill had purchased some big windows for the lodge after their picture window had been vandalized. I wanted to buy the extra windows from them for the greenhouse.

After the accident, once things were sort of normal, I decided to go ahead with the greenhouse. I had some amazing pallets that Deejo had given us years before. They'd been acting as  training bridges for the horses, but they were perfect for the walls of the greenhouse! Mom agreed to let me have the "spare" windows from the Lodge. It was a start.

Skeeter training over what would become the greenhouse walls.

In May of '23, Mom and I started our summer mother-daughter project: to build a greenhouse for the pomegranate trees I'd ordered. 

Did either of us know what we were doing? Nope! 

Did it stop us? Also nope! 

I mean, have you met us? When the GunDiva and the Bionic Cowgirl put their minds to something, the universe just better get the hell out of the way and let us do our thing.

That's not to say we didn't have a plan, we did. I put a lot of thought into how to keep the roots of the plants warm throughout the coldest days of the winter. We typically have around ten days of sub-zero temps each winter, in January or February, so I knew I had to keep those roots warm and happy. To do so, I decided that I'd plant them in tires, so the black of the tire would act as a heat sink. I also decided that I'd put black weed barrier down as the floor to attract more heat, insulate the walls with bubble wrap, and cover them with black trash bags, all in hopes of drawing as much heat as possible.

I wanted to use as many reclaimed and recycled things as possible, partly to keep my inner hippie happy, partly to keep the cost down. LE offered up her basement scraps, which I came to refer to as shopping at LE Depot. Her "scraps" were amazing! When she remodeled her house many years ago, a friend had forbidden her from throwing them away. I am forever thankful, because we found a lot of useable lumber that saved us hundreds of dollars.

Mom drew out some plans on graph paper, then on May 7, 2023, we broke ground. We spent most weekends throughout the summer working on the greenhouse. It quickly became known as the "treehouse" because it was built specifically to house my pomegranate trees. 

We chose a sunny area near to LE's garden.

Just laying out the pallets made it feel more real

Setting the posts.

Installing the "walls".

Pomegranates can grow to between 10' - 12', so we made the front just over 10'. The rear is 6'.

This beam is not even close to straight, but it came from Mom and Beel's old horse shed, so it had to be used.

We had to call in some additional help to get the beams in.

Starting to take shape.

Rafters going up.

Bionic Cowgirl channeling her inner monkey.

I had to take a selfie to prove that Mom wasn't the only one working on the greenhouse.

Once the rafters were up, we called on the boys to help get the roof on, and to cap the pallets in preparation for the windows.

Roof's on (and one window set).