Larry Floersch
It has always bothered me that although I start gardening in March, I must wait until August or September to start picking produce such as tomatoes and melons. I decided if I had a greenhouse, I could get fruits and vegetables much earlier in the season.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “But Lare, a greenhouse is pretty elaborate and expensive. Can’t you just buy your produce at the grocery store or farmers market like a normal person?” No! I come from a long line of do-it-yourselfers and am therefore bound by the DIY oath to suffer much more than your average American male-type person.
I remember well when the DIY spirit first struck me when I was about seven or eight years old. I took apart the family lawn mower because I thought my dad would be happy I had cleaned the carbon buildup on the cylinder head. And I remember how I suffered on the long ride with him to the hardware store to buy a new mower.
I mention this so you know that since childhood I’ve had extensive experience with such things as box-end wrenches and milled-face framing hammers. In fact, I have on many occasions — and this is no small feat — successfully assembled furniture from IKEA. Well, except for that “Hemnes” bed that, after a very sudden stop in traffic on Decarie Boulevard in Montreal, shot out of the front of its box on the roof rack and over the hood of my car much like a torpedo being launched from a PT boat, and how my spouse and I tried to gather up the pieces from the middle lane as Montreal drivers swirled around us yelling what were no doubt words of encouragement in French. And we almost got all those pieces, too. But I digress.
I determined that no simple greenhouse would do because we live in a high-wind area, where we frequently have gusts that would test the chains and cables holding down the weather observatory atop Mount Washington. So I did my research on the web and found several greenhouses from manufacturers that claimed their models could withstand the violent weather conditions in my backyard.
One particularly nice greenhouse was manufactured in Germany and, given the price, had no doubt been designed by engineers formerly employed by Porsche. Instead, I settled for a less expensive greenhouse manufactured in a large and populous nation on the far side of the Pacific that looked very, very similar to the expensive Porsche one.
The kit arrived in three boxes and even included a plastic baggie containing most of the wrenches and screwdrivers needed to assemble it. I remembered reading in the company’s website description that it would take the average DIYer and a helper about two days to assemble the greenhouse and that no special technical skills were needed. As a DIYer experienced in highly technical projects, I scoffed at that estimate, vowing to get it done in one day — alone. Then I picked up the instruction booklet and read this, and I quote directly: “We hope that by following the detailed assembly instructions you will find as much pleasure in assembly process same as the time you will spend in your greenhouse in the future.”
“Who wrote that?” I wondered. Yoda?!
It was then I realized I had not taken “globalization” into account in my research and that there was indeed a “technical skill” required to assemble the greenhouse, which was that of a highly skilled translator at the United Nations. As I read on, it became clear the instructions had been written by someone for whom English was a thirty-fourth language.
The first step was to assemble the greenhouse base. The instructions for this came with this note: “IMPORTANT. Before assembling aluminum base, the end trough centers of four legs should match both end trough centers of side sills and front & rear sills at the same time.” I wasn’t sure if those were instructions for the greenhouse or a square dance maneuver.
Some instructions were glaring in their absence. Attaching the aluminum base to Planet Earth put me in a quandary. Other than an illustration of the greenhouse sitting on four concrete-filled piers at the corners that went down into the earth to bedrock — a course of action I did not want to follow — the instructions failed to address the possibilities.
Other instructions were obviously intended to be jokes. After I had completed the assembly of a gable end and had moved it into the shed for safekeeping pending later assembly on the base, one page later in the instructions I ran across this: “Please Note: 4 bolts will need to be slid in each Part #V703 and #V704 for ridge, hanging basket bar or horizontal rail and side beam in advance.”
Parts #V703 and #V704 were, of course, integral to the gable end, which had to be retrieved from the shed, dissembled, the aforementioned bolts added, and then reassembled.
It’s been four months since I started the greenhouse project. I think I may be finished. I’m not sure.
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