Through A Glasshouse Darkly

The brook that provides me my water

The beginning of this season on my land could not be more different from the beginning of last year's. Then, I was learning for the first time to live completely alone, in a caravan with no mains water or electricity, in an almost totally unknown land. Now I have six months of experience to fall back on and I'm back in familiar territory. Then, I knew nobody at all. This time, in my first week I've met up with five or six friends, and I even had a surprise visit from two guys from the local village donating a trailer-full of fresh horse manure.  Then, the plot was a jungle of soft rush, bracken, brambles and other interesting weeds. And now it is already beginning to take the shape of a cultivated market garden.

 

A heap of free fertiliser

Once I had settled into my tiny home and more or less got my stuff to fit where it should or could or at least would, I was desperate to get started with sowing seeds especially as the heatwave began to sweep across the nation. First though I had to get the greenhouse into working condition. The glassless frame had survived the winter, just. Some steel wire tying it to the base was the only thing that prevented it from being whisked off to England by the gales. With the help of Peter* from Dinas Mawddwy we bent it back into position, tightened up some loose nuts, screwed it firmly to the base plates which themselves had to be repositioned, and more or less managed to get the whole thing level with judicious jimmying of slivers of wood in corners.  The glass panes were then carefully slid into place.

My hitching spot in Mallwyd

At least, the bottom ones were. It turned out I didn't have any of the Z clips that connect upper to lower panes, so an annoying forty hour hiatus occurred until Monday morning when the shops re-opened and I was able to hitch in to Machynlleth and buy some. The rest of the day I spent balancing with the pedantic care of a bomb defusion expert, lowering sheets of glass onto the roof whilst perching on a stack of palettes for height or lifting them up into position from within, then popping in the edge clips to secure them. A second old greenhouse that Peter had kindly donated to me was cannibalised for its glass to replace previously broken panes. And it was done! A thing of beauty to behold. Not since the Crystal Palace was completed in 1851 has a house of glass been so excitedly welcomed.

I'm using straw bales as tables - they help to keep it warmer at night.

A day later, it is full of cell trays thrumming with potentiality, or more accurately damp compost and vegetable seeds. So far there are twenty-seven broad beans, forty 'summer' cabbage, and 120 leeks in there, still in their embryonic form, and perched next to them is the tray of tomato seedlings I started off at Pilsdon with which I had to share my caravan since arriving as the only warm(ish) place for them, until now.

In the midst of all this I have also been replacing my caravan water inlet and pressure switch to fix the long-standing issue with my kitchen taps (I can't tell you how sweet it feels simply to turn a tap and water to flow out), adding lime to the raised beds that hadn't yet had it, picking out the many pebbles of varying size that are strewn throughout the beds, pulling up old cardboard and carpet I'd used to stop weeds growing, planting more small blueberry shrubs to replace the ones that the pheasants destroyed over winter, protecting the garlic shoots which also have been nibbled almost to extinction, and generally having a good time.

The twelve raised beds soon to be bursting with edible vegetation

* names changed as usual