You Bought A What !

This is where I reveal that Karen has an eye for a bargain. So we have a large area of land, I like tomatoes which leads us to the need for a greenhouse. So I get home from work one day to the bargain hunter of the century telling me that she had bought a 6m x 4m greenhouse. All we had to do was to collect it.

"Can't it be delivered" you hear me cry.

"No - it is second hand and is collect only."

Hmmmmmmm... Never one to turn down a challenge especially one which has on reflection saved us several hundred pounds I start looking for van hire companies. I had already worked out that a family saloon car will not be up to the job. So one Saturday afternoon we set off to Hull with large sums of money to collect the aforementioned "bargain".

Four hours later we have a large collection of semi assembled greenhouse, glass, used plant pots and other miscellaneous gardening equipment. We also had two key items - the assembly instructions supplied with the original greenhouse and a biscuit tin full of nuts and bolts.

Three Dimensional Jigsaw
As a child I was never too keen on jigsaws. My parents loved them but not me. Here I was twenty plus years on with a large aluminium and glass which has cost us the same as a life times supply of jigsaws.

The first thing to do was to get an idea on location for the monster. So one day I came up with the bright (or not so bright) idea of loosely putting together the shell to see how it would look. Do you ever get the feeling that you should not have started something but once you have got going it well sort of takes on a life of its own. Well this was one of those occasions. Part way through I knew that drawing the outline is sand - or even pegs and string should have been enough. But hey, I was half way there so why not carry on!

Six hours, a hundred or so nuts and bolts and I had put together a master piece. Well I had the aluminium shell standing on its own and I knew I had enough metal to put it together and keep the glass in place.

And really that's how it stayed for several months, standing there looking silver and making me feel guilty about not putting the concrete base down.

So What Were You Doing?
In the meantime, summer had started and I was busy at work so had little time for the garden. Karen was working on the borders whilst I was working. It was July before we could spend some serious time attacking the crop of weeds to which we had become the proud owners.

Having bought some of the weeds under control it was back to the vegetable plot and the greenhouse. By this time it had spent the majority of the summer standing at the end of the garden making us feel guilty and rattling in the occasional strong wind.

So one morning in early July I was sitting with a cup of tea looking at the area I was to attack next and the urge to get the veg plot in some order became too strong. Out came the yellow pages and two hours later I had a large rotorvator, a manual, some basic training (throttle, brake and don't put your feet under the spinny things) and a plentiful supply of petrol.

So off I went man and machine not so much in harmony more like in competition. If you have never used a rotorvator then you need to know two things:

• It wants to skim across the soil doing as little work as possible
• You want it in the earth doing as much work as possible.

So off I set pulling the machine back and forcing it as deep into the ground as possible. The two of us managed to fight against each other we me winning - well most of the time I was winning - in straight lines. All was going well for about an hour. At this point I was getting pretty close the the aluminium monster and had to work out a plan for working around it. I was sure that if rotorvator met greenhouse then there would be a large amount of noise and a small pile of useless aluminium. This would result in a conversation I did not want to have. Having worked out a path for the machine the only thing to do was to bend the rotorvator to my will.

It was at this point that I discovered two flaws in my plan. Firstly, the area man and machine were approaching was the area around the old fruit trees and for some unknown (at the time) reason the machine would occasionally fly out of the ground and head towards the lawn at high (for a rotorvator) speed. The second problem was the holes left by the fruit trees I had removed several months before. Now whilst rotovators are good at dealing with flat ground they are not known for the skill in descending into and climbing out of holes five feet across and three feet deep. Working out that if I went around the holes I would eventually be able to push the earth in and fill the holes I managed to solve this problem. So now I had a flat(er) surface I could continue with my battle with the machine.

After several long hours and a large quantity of water it was done. We were now the proud owners of a patch of very fluffy soil. With a half assembled greenhouse.

Just to put this in perspective, from the edge of the lawn show to the fence at the end of the garden is 35m.

And Finally...

Like a hire car, the company likes to have the machine returned to them full of fuel. Never try to fill the tank over the lawn the wife wants to keep as you are bound to spill some petrol.

Never mind... It will grow back.

Mark