Greenhouse or Dog House?

When we came to look at this house, I didn’t really know what to expect. I knew that it was in a great, well-populated neighborhood close to downtown. The street view is unsuspecting. It’s a large, lovely home but nothing extraordinary to write home about. Well, when we walked around to the back, our breath was taken away. Hidden behind some high shrubbery was a cute little green building with brick floor, a handyman special sink, and awesome heat lamps on a pully system. To the left of the door was a little sign saying “George’s Greenhouse.” We’ve decided to leave that little wooden sign as a nod to the man who spent so many years tending to the garden. We still call it “George’s” in our household… I can’t see that going away anytime soon.

Don’t pay any notice to that ugly white table in the picture. We like to 

start our seedlings outside when the sun is shining so we needed something that could get dirty and not soggy.

 The greenhouse has a wonderful storage area behind it where George kept pots, wood planks, plexiglass, and a whole world of stuff that I don’t even begin to understand—we’ve been figuring it all out as we go along. This little space also tends to turn into a huge mud puddle that our greyhounds LOVE to bathe in. Aren’t they lucky?

This cute little building also has two rain barrels sitting under its gutters. It is so great to just be able to dunk our watering can in for our seedlings and know that we’re preserving water. Too bad we can’t filter the water out of the mud puddle…

Inside the greenhouse is a perfectly engineered use of space. We have a place to roll our wheel barrow, a loft space for those awkwardly huge bags of planting soil, seed preservation, fertilizer or whatever else we just need to get out of our way (yeah, yeah, we stick crap up there, too). The ceiling is outfitted with a skylight at an angle above the heat lamps. The lamps are definitely my favorite part of this entire greenhouse. They’re on a hand-made pully system so that we can lower or raise them as much as we need to. It took us about a month before we realized that they even moved! It’s the absolute perfect place for our plant babies to come to life.

I wish the weather would get better so that we can get these plants out of the greenhouse and into the garden! COME ON SUMMER!!!