Well good day to you madgardener. You have such a way with
words. With my five hundred word vocabulary I will try and
communicate with you. You made me quit felling sorry for
myself today. As usual I was wishing for more worldly things and realized I had things, other people wanted.
I have the sun room you were talking about, plus I have
a home made greenhouse. I still may be poor but compared
to the people in New Orleans, God has blessed me. Thanks
for helping me see.
Norm

hello Norm. or should I say, 'maternut..... I agree. I remember having a window box my husband made me one year with shelves that he built around a window that was a little drafty but facing south, which was actually perfect for cacti and succulents made entirely of lexxan. He scrounged pieces of unusuable lexxan and built me the most ingenious window box for all the little pots of assorts desert plants I had.

I agree with you that I'm blessed too. Just having a place for my stuff, made me humble to think about coming back to my home of years and finding a pile of moldy lumber and trash with toxic remnants. I can't imagine trying to grow or live in New Orleans no matter how much they rebuild it. How do you undo the damage that all those chemicals and herbicides and such have done.

My aunt Jean has a great sunroom I lust for....... everytime I visit her and my mom, I always want to fill her window's with plants......the greenhouse sounds great too. I probably have capability for a greenhouse if I could get husband to dismantle the unused shed that the previous owners built that I have never in ten years used. I'd rather have the space the building is sitting on to do something else with.............always felt that way, too. Sometimes I just want to take a match to it and burn it and move on from there! lol..... but I have felled Jack pines that I'd have to haul away before I could burn where the shed is, and that sucker is huge....(I need to take that reciprocating saw and dismantle the thing and set a match to all that trash trellis and lumber underneath!) it's perfectly useable barnboard sides with a tin roof and enormous!

The evenings are cool enough here now that I find more and more bumble bees asleep on the flowers the next morning. Some stray monarch's have been visiting the Frakartii asters that are still in bloom.

I apprently misused the word distracted, but other than that, am glad to meet you! I've been thinking more and more about bringing in the jungle and desert. always an anti-climate sorta thing each year. One cactus weighs 150 pounds and is about six foot tall.............most of my pots are clay, too, and glazed. The Cereus cactus above is in a heavy black nursery pot with good handles. I generally tip her over the high threshhold and drag her back inside. I also have my daddy's old solid iron hand dolly when I get too old to do that......

Just hope I can set up the perfect place for all those prickly euphorbia's. I adore them! I have a Hawortia I discovered that is blooming at the moment, and know I'll probably lose the echivera. Maybe not, but it will be another challange. Despite tight funds this year, I've managed to keep alive some old friends. I have one succulent I've succeeded in keeping alive now for eight years. and the begonia has come back from the brink of death to once again face the uncertainty of a winter in my warm and dry house.

hope your fall is kind to you, and not so hectic.
madgardener up on the ridge, back in fairy holler, overlooking a foggy English Mountain in Eastern Tennessee zone 7, Sunset 36

Madgardener,

Any chance you could just put some windows in part of the south wall of the shed for a greenhouse? If you built the greenhouse sorta inside the shed, you would have the insulation of the shed and plenty of garden storage around it. If you are a scrounger, windows are pretty much free. The sun is so low in the winter that side walls are enough and a roof keeps in heat better than glass.

Just a thought,
Evelyn

Thanks for posting - I enjoy your writings, and had been wondering where you were and what you were up to. I too would love a sun room!! Maybe some day.

well, I'd rather have the storage shed dismantled and the space that it's sitting on. We also have a two story outbuilding that I'm letting Karol's son use for storing his apartment contents until he finds another place to live. (the Karol who helped me organize). As much as it sounds wasteful to dismantle such a neat shed, I've never used it in the ten years we've been here! Husband says he'd like to scrounge the sides to enclose the carport, and believe me, with the terraces we have naturally on the northside of this house built against a ridge with slopes that go down rather steeply, it's one of the few level places I can utilize for a veggie patch. Despite that it's on the north side, the patch would get direct eastern, indirect southern and slight western exposure. I have NO level area's hardly at all. I wonder what on earth we were thinking when we bought this place. But I remember the woods weren't impassable, and finding the "fairy boulder" down in the lower woods was one of the points. The house seemed solid at the time (things change dramatically) and it's at the end of a dead end that indeed looks out over English Mountain and Douglas Lake in Dandridge.

I had started another post, but we had a power farp and two hours of fairly decent writing went the way of no save......oh well, I have other times to repost. Thanks for the idea's on window's. I have a downstairs room full of double pane window's a friend gave me when they bought new ones for their home. And with the shed being behind the house (which is two story) putting windows in the south walls wouldn't make much more sense. I'd rather dismantle it with the reciprocating saw and motivate "Squire" to do what he says he wants to do with the barn board. Figure each piece costs around $26 and there's enough to enclose the carport and provide warmth to the nook I hang out in on my computer, where all my garden books are, and my music nook not to mention oldest son's bedroom.

that would free up a fantastic space for the small truck patch I so desperately want. And inspire me to finally start clearing out more! (the poison ivy and poison oak are tromping towards the western portion of my woods where it's not at yet........) soon I won't be able to go down into my own woods because of the poison ivies. It's gonna take a LOT of RoundUp as it is.

thanks for the encouraging words. there will be a madness garden ramble when I try again tomorrow, I promise. Good to be back.

madgardener