C.S. Wilson's Blog, page 4

The Magical Potting Shed, Part 3

After working for just food for a couple of weekends, Chief had to spend some time with his family, and I grudgingly allowed it.

Unfortunately, we were quickly approaching October, and storms were on the horizon. I needed to get the roof on. LE generously let me pilfer the barn for bits and pieces, and I found some tin roofing material. It didn't quite fit the whole roof, so I hit Home Depot and bought a couple of clear greenhouse roofing panels to work in with the scavenged ones.

A couple of friends from work volunteered to come play Rosie the Roofer with me. We meticulously measured, laid out the panels, and had a plan. It wasn't going to take us but a couple of hours.

Measuring and marking, getting ready to put up the rafters.

Turns out, Lizzy the old truck, was just the perfect helper.

Despite all of the careful planning, measuring, laying out that we did, once we started putting up the panels things went sideways. Suddenly, things were not going so well. We forged ahead, making adjustments here and there, until we got a roof on Maggie. Her roof sits a bit askew, and it made us crazy until we realized that we'd assumed she was square.

She was not. An inch here or there makes a difference, and her north (back) side is a touch shorter than her south (front) side, so even though we laid the rafters square, the building itself is not. I, frankly, love it and I smile big every time I look at her crooked little "hat". It reminds me of Minerva McGonagall's jaunty hat.

Credit: Harry Potter FanZone
See? The roof is sitting at a jaunty angle. It's perfect.

Our "just a couple of hours" project turned into all day, but it was a ton of fun. My friend's son even joined us and made a gnome home out of 2x4 scraps.

My little gnome, cozy in his new home.

The Potting Shed, Part 2

It took me a while to get my poop in a group and get started, but I managed to hire movers to move the potting bench out of LE's basement and coordinate with Ashinator's best Marine friend, Chief. In September, 2023 we broke ground.

My non-negotiables for the potting shed included:

The stained glass window from the lodge,"Vintage" windows from Mom's cabin,The "potting bench" from LE's basement,An old door that had been living in one of the barns that I fell in love with.

We literally built the shed around the potting bench.
I 'rescued' some pallets from work to use.
Chief worked fast. This was all the first day.
I was astounded by how much someone who knows what they're doing can do in just one day. It would have taken Mom and I at least two days to get this far. Building a frame instead of just putting it together like a puzzle is genius, not to mention the correct way to do it.
Ashinator mentioned that the potting shed was looking "quirky", which became its working name. It fit.
Bright and early the next Saturday, Chief was back at it, putting the windows in. Some of the windows were missing panes, broken from being removed from the cabin, but I wasn't worried about it, considering Mom and I had become glass cutting "experts" with Whimsy.
Non-negotiables numbers 1 - 3 complete.
She looks like a real building with walls.

The requisite "I helped" picture.
I might not know a thing about framing walls,
but I can use a square and saw.

Again, I was amazed at how much Chief could accomplish in just a day, and I'm so thankful he volunteered to do this. All I had to do was feed him! I definitely got the better end of the deal.

By the end of the day, "Quirky" fit as a name. 

However, the minute we started putting the OSB up, she no longer looked quirky. I was floundering for a name, until LE walked out and said, "oh, she looks magical". Ashinator and I agreed that she did, indeed, look magical and immediately "The Magical Potting Shed" stuck. I love how LE just casually comes up with the perfect names. Ash immediately shortened "Magical" to "Maggie", which I embraced. Maggie was named within a day or so of Dame Maggie Smith's death, so it seemed even more fitting.

Welcome to the family, Maggie.

The Potting Shed, Part 1

 Following my failure with getting seeds to start in Whimsy, I decided we needed a potting shed. And, it just so happened that the Bionic Cowgirl was getting the windows replaced in her cabin, which meant more free windows! I seriously can't let an old window go to waste.

Plus, there was this amazing stained glass window that she'd brought down for Whimsy that we never got incorporated, so I had to build something to hold the window, right?

This window stood sentry outside of Whimsy,
just waiting for me to figure out what to do with it.

Plus, LE had offered me a cabinet a few years ago. The catch was that I'd have to get it up from her basement without ruining her beautiful floors. It was a heavy piece of furniture, with bins for flour and sugar, but, more importantly for me, a pull-out bread board for rolling dough. That piece of furniture was never far from my mind, and last spring I had a eureka moment in which I realized that would be the perfect potting bench. There were drawers for supplies, and two tilt-out bins that we could put potting soil in. It needs some love, but not a lot. I'll strip the paint from the top, sand it and the pull-out board, and seal the surfaces with polyurethane, then she'll be ready to go.

It needs some love, but not a lot.

Old windows from Mom's cabin, a stained glass window that she and Beel found in the lodge attic, and a potting bench from LE. All signs pointed to being required to build a potting shed. My mind made up, I hired movers to get the potting bench up from LE's basement and chose a spot near Whimsy that would be easy-ish to reach with a hose.

I gathered some pallets from work and contacted a friend of Ashinator's to help with the build. I knew that I had to make it less air-flow-y than Whimsy, so I had to call in someone who know what the heck he was doing.

The Potting Shed, Part I

 Following my failure with getting seeds to start in Whimsy, I decided we needed a potting shed. And, it just so happened that the Bionic Cowgirl was getting the windows replaced in her cabin, which meant more free windows! I seriously can't let an old window go to waste.

Plus, there was this amazing stained glass window that she'd brought down for Whimsy that we never got incorporated, so I had to build something to hold the window, right?

This window stood sentry outside of Whimsy,
just waiting for me to figure out what to do with it.

Plus, LE had offered me a cabinet a few years ago. The catch was that I'd have to get it up from her basement without ruining her beautiful floors. It was a heavy piece of furniture, with bins for flour and sugar, but, more importantly for me, a pull-out bread board for rolling dough. That piece of furniture was never far from my mind, and last spring I had a eureka moment in which I realized that would be the perfect potting bench. There were drawers for supplies, and two tilt-out bins that we could put potting soil in. It needs some love, but not a lot. I'll strip the paint from the top, sand it and the pull-out board, and seal the surfaces with polyurethane, then she'll be ready to go.

It needs some love, but not a lot.

Old windows from Mom's cabin, a stained glass window that she and Beel found in the lodge attic, and a potting bench from LE. All signs pointed to being required to build a potting shed. My mind made up, I hired movers to get the potting bench up from LE's basement and chose a spot near Whimsy that would be easy-ish to reach with a hose.

I gathered some pallets from work and contacted a friend of Ashinator's to help with the build. I knew that I had to make it less air-flow-y than Whimsy, so I had to call in someone who know what the heck he was doing.

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. 

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.