Proof that I am not the ONLY crazy person around here

A couple weeks ago, the husband went to the store to buy copier ink and index cards. And that’s how all of this came into my life.

You may be wondering what the heck all that even is. “Tama!” you may be asking. “Did you guys dismantle the Golden Gate Bridge and bring it home or something?!”

No. No we did not.

What the husband stumbled across while he was getting index cards and copier ink was a warehouse liquidation sale. Those big orange doohickeys are dismantled warehouse shelving – the kind you can store refrigerators and transmissions and other really heavy things on.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, First of all, I think I need more coffee or something because I seriously can’t keep up with this. And secondly, what the ever-lastin’ Jelly Belly do you think you’re going to DO with refrigerator-storage-enabling SHELVING?!

Well. The husband – all by himself, this was not, REPEAT, NOT!, my idea! – has decided that he is building a 16’ x 12’ greenhouse for me. He spent quite a few hours fiddling around with dimensions and other engineer-y stuff in this AutoCAD-ish program he has, figuring out how he’d run water to it, and how to handle humidity / light / blah blah blah, and what gauge beams he wants for the roof, and what grade plastic he needs for the jacket…and sorry, ladies, but this particular geek is SO taken.

Actual sexiness may be higher than it appears in this picture

I’m excited by the possibilities something like this would open up...and a little scared of them, too. Kind of along the lines of, “Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it,” I suppose.

I’ve frequently wished I could do more “bulk” planting – instead of smaller 10x10 or 10x12 boxes of just this one thing, I’d love to do half the yard in corn, the other half in tomatoes. Plant nothing but peas in early February! An entire yard of green beans in May! Stuff the freezer with bags, pack the pantry with Mason jars! Ring the whole thing with a thousand onion sets!

Buuuuuuuut, of course, this isn’t just some ‘back to the land’ thing. It’s also about minimizing our basic financial needs – the less we “have” to spend on this-n-that-n-the-other, the more we have available for other things.

So when I’m looking at a situation where I could either break the area up into several smaller boxes, grow lots of different things in “just a few meals worth” quantity and save $200-300 at the supermarket, or dedicate the whole entire area to growing enough wheat to replace one, MAYBE two at the outside of those $12 sacks of flour at Costco…welllllll, there’s what might be called an economic inequality between those two choices.

And I end up with tiny patches of spinach, pak choi, three kinds of lettuce, and one lonely little eggplant…

BUT…if I’m moving those into a greenhouse and taking them vertically up ten feet worth of shelves, thus freeing up a good 75% of the growing area currently taken up by Such Things…wellllll, now, I have options that might make sense.

I love the idea of it. And I know I’ll enjoy the part where I’m putting my hands on things and actually doing the individual tasks. Taken one at a time, I enjoy weeding, hoeing, planting, harvesting, and preserving.

Where it starts to get to me a bit is when I step back and look at the whole thing. THAT’S when I start to get a case of nerves, and wonder if I’m woman enough for All That.

Suppose I’ll have to see when we get there. It’ll be a while before the husband can get this thing going, so I have at least the rest of this season and possibly the entire fall and winter too before I’ll have to actually worry about it.

Which leaves me free to ponder more important questions, such as, What on earth do you DO with a busted up babysitter swing that should probably go to the dump except that it’s too CUTE – even busted up like that – to just throw away?

Four words: Butternut Squash Jungle Gym!