I beg to report that my greenhouse is still standing and has successfully withstood all the buffetting of the torrential rains with which we have been blessed since March.
Even the automatic opening window in the roof has decided to live up to makers advert and open up when the inside temperature reaches the degree to which it has been set.
For a while it was obstinate and refused to open at all, but after some persuasion with a hammer and a few choice four letter adjectives, felt that it might as well cooperate and started to open at 40F which would have given any plants therein a touch of frostbite of the stalk. However a few more whacks of the old persuader stopped it being bloody minded and it has since behaved as per guarantee.
While on the subject of things not going right first time of asking, do you suffer likewise? I feel that I can't be peculiar in this respect. It seems that there must be an inbuilt perversity in the scheme of things which states that no ways in anybody going to get a smooth ride by having things go right first time out.
Everybody must suffer from it. Or is it only me?
All you want is a quiet life. Just do the job, get it over with as quick as possible, get your plates up in front of the box and take it easy with a fag and a pint.
How come there's always this hassle with fate even with the simplest of jobs such as bunging a nail in a lump of wood? It never goes in like it should do straight away. Either bends over or splits the wood, which means getting it out again, straightening it and glueing the split before attempting to whack it in again.
Point is, it always goes right the second time of asking, so why no the first time?
I remember once having to replace a faulty rote arm on the motor. Now what can be easier than that? Just remove the distributor head, take off the old arm and put on the replacement.
Simple.
So I did just that, but when putting on the new one, dropped it.
You know what? I never did find that bloody rote arm. It wasn't under the car and I searched every nook and cranny I could find on the car. Nowhere. I figure it must have sprouted legs and run like hell on hitting the deck or disguised itself as a nut and dropped off after I got another one on and got the car going.
Now why couldn't it go right first time? No bother. After all can't be me all the time, can it?
Anyway, about this greenhouse I got.
Apart one one flesh wound and a stiff neck got through working in a cold wind, everything was all systems go, and I thought that at last I'd done something right first time. It was windproof, watertight and as cosy as Uncle Tom's cabin.
Great!
Well, apart from one little item which caused a slight doubt in my mind. It wasn't the knowledge that I'm no gardener, I'm well aware that what I know about gardening could be put in a thimble and still leave plenty of room for my thumb.
Also the title of Little Green Fingers don't apply either, Doctor Death could have picked up a tip or two from my hands when it comes to plant life, I've seen poison ivy struggle to get into next doors garden after starting in to mine when I've come along.
No problems there as my wife was appointed O.I.C. Greenhouse with full vested authority to direct and supervise any labouring that would be required to be done by me. So why the misgiving when everything was covered with a fully comprehensive insurance?
Well. I gather that the main function of a greenhouse is to raise plants, from seeds preferably, in order to save the expense of buying them from a retailer who will charge 45p for each little plant when you can expect to raise perhaps fifty from each packet of seed you've bought for 30p.
Right? OK.
We got all our seed boxes, soil, packets of seed etc and sowed according to instructions, carefully spraying with sun-warmed water at nights. Visions of unlimited supplies of tomatoes, cucumbers, marrows and flowers kept my wife and I nursing those boxes of earth like they were triplets, and we were all set for the good life.
This is where the doubt came in. About me doing something right first time.
After some time we felt the gestation period should now be over and little plants should be thrusting their little bonces through the surface, anxious to grow big and bear fruits, as is their destiny. And what have we got?
Several miniature deserts of earth looking as fruitful as an octogenarian spinster.
So we decided to do a bit of investigation. Maybe we'd put the seeds in too deeply or upside down. We started with the tomatoes.
Result of investigation - nowt. Not a seed to be found.
The marrows? - likewise
We moved to the cucumbers - ditto.
Flowers? No hope. Either vanished completely or as dormant as they were in the packets.
So we started again. With fresh seed but this time with carefree abandon. Each seed box was blessed with the benediction of the true gardener -
"Right, you got two chances, you sods, live or die and see if we care"
And with the true perversity of nature they all did - live. Each seed booming upwards, elbowing their mates aside in an effort to get more growing space.
Now why couldn't they have done that in the first time of asking? Beats me.
Anyway, time has progressed, as have the seedlings. They've grown in to plants and have been potted out, hardened off and bedded out to permanent sites, and we felt that at last we'd done a good job with the greenhouse and its functions.
Well, maybe. There's still some doubt, cos this thing about nothing going right first time is continuous, and while we got the greenhouse to perform its function after successful erection, we forgot that there's many phases between the first bite of the fruit from the sowing of the seed. All prone to the rule of the first time failure.
This year, which is known as the Year of the Disabled*, is a misnomer.
All this rain we've had has raised an army and it should now be called the Year of the Slug.
We've been invaded by millions of the ugly back slimy abortions and are now involved in a battle of extermination armed with salt and pellets to try and save a few of our cherished plants which they're gobbling up like a plague of locusts.
I've got a feeling I should have a bought a shed.
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