A very special garden shed

Suddenly this week it got really beautiful. Even back before the climate started to change, April in Montreal was always wildly unpredictable, with anything from snowstorms to gorgeous sunny t-shirt and shorts weather, sometimes only days apart. Being a city buried in deep freeze for half the year, when those first days of warm weather hit, we throw caution to the wind, take down our Tempos, take out our bikes and get the urge to plant tomatoes. Even though the "frost date" comes the third week of May, and those who plant tomatoes too early run the risk of losing them some cold night early in May, the temptation is strong.

Just after my last post (and after two fantastic and comparatively incident-free seders, and lots of wonderful time spent with family and friends visiting from all over), I planted my seeds indoors. I put in chocolate cherry tomatoes (at least I hope that's what was in that envelope), San Marzano and steak tomatoes, two varieties of hot peppers, four types of basil, several types of sunflowers and a week later, when I remembered, some of that wonderful "blue wind" broccoli. The person who named the variety must have a sense of humour. I get the "wind" part, but not sure why blue. They looked pretty green to me.

A walk around the garden last week gave me the first snapshot of what comes out when the snow melts, the first spring plants. The usual expected ones were there: strawberries, onions, periwinkle, crocuses, hyacinths, but also some I did not expect so soon, the sweet williams and the poppies! There was also a lettuce starting where I had them two years ago, and some seeded and then I let reseed again last year. I decided that if the lettuce was coming up on its own, then I should plant my first batch this week.

To do so, I needed to move the bikes, which wintered in the area I planned to use as a lettuce patch this year. I checked out the temporary bike shed, and realized that this was going to be an interesting project. As I have explained before, Josh has some grandiose plans for a workshop/shed in the back yard, and as we do not have the money for this, we have a low cost bike shed/garden shed with a roof we can remove to make a Sukkah in the fall for the Jewish Holiday of Sukkot. The original sukkahs were harvest huts, temporary shelters in the fields used to sleep in during harvest season, so using our garden shed as the basis of our sukkah has a really authentic feel. In fact, I use the shed to dry garlic, store garden tools and materials, so it really is a harvest hut. The frame is wood, the walls are tarp with a gap between the walls and the roof, which is made of plywood covered in tarps. At least it was until last fall. It is not very watertight, and the tarps were less than effective after 5 years, so when Josh took them down, he decided that after Sukkot we really should replace the roof. Being Josh, he had all kinds of ideas of alternate materials to replace the wood, some of which sounded great but did not work with our budget last fall. I started a new job and was on a temporary contract which could end abruptly, and there was a long delay before my salary was adjusted to the proper level based on my experience, so we were a bit precarious financially and plastic sheeting could wait. We had temporarily moved the bikes and lawn mower out of the sukkah, and I suggested that we use the gazebo frame which we use to grow beans and cucumbers on (and lettuce under) to put the bikes in, and cover the flimsy structure with tarps to keep the rain out. After Sukkot, I suggested sealing the structure completely with tarps for the winter and leaving the shed roofless until the spring, thus postponing the purchase of materials and the construction job until warmer weather.

At the beginning of the winter, the temporary bike shed had a peaked roof. The gazebo frame, like much of the material used for our garden, was rescued from being thrown out and many of the joints were held together by one of Josh's favourite construction materials, zipties. One very heavy snowfall in February, I looked out the window to see that the roof of the temporary bike shed was gone, replaced by an inverted yet large pile of snow. We looked at it for a while and decided that there was not much we could do about it so let it be. Last week, when I looked at the weather forecast, I decided that it was time to take the bikes out of the shed (and plant some lettuce). The tarp that was sealing off the front of the gazebo had the bottom of it trailing on the ground in a puddle of ice, freezing it shut. The top of the gazebo had collapsed, so that the tarp over the top was slung down, weighed down by two large puddles of ice water with chunks of ice still floating in them, separated by a peak which was held up by the seat of one of the bicycles underneath. The fact that the puddles were held suspended suggested that the tarps, at least, were not leaking much and the bikes underneath should be okay. I waited another day before tackling the problem, because there was not much point until the tarps were free of ice at the base and could be removed.

I told Josh that we needed to take care of the roof, so I could liberate the bikes and have a place to shelter them properly. Josh suggested that for the summer, we could put on a roof made of corrugated plastic, and when we take it down for Sukkot, he could then buy pressboard to put underneath to reinforce it when the snow falls in order to make it stronger, and that he could put the corrugated plastic on top in shingles overlapping to make it more watertight. In fact, he said, he could probably get some corrugated plastic from our friend Yoram, who may have some he is getting rid of from his retail company. This sounded quite affordable and reasonable. I had a vague idea of what I thought corrugated plastic looked like, something like what is used in making greenhouses. I was not sure what it was used for in stores, or why Yoram would have some to give away for free, but when Josh left to pick it up on Sunday morning, I did not worry about it. My mind was on freeing the bikes.

The easiest way to get the water off the collapsed temporary shed was to pierce a few holes in the tarps on top and let it drain, but as our bikes were underneath, and the purpose of the shed was to keep them dry, suddenly dumping a winter's accumulation of melted precipitation on them was not an ideal solution in my mind. Josh found a plastic tube at my request, and I used the old suck the tube to get the water flowing and direct the end quickly at a bucket before ingesting it trick. I had just emptied my compost bin, and as our outdoor hose was not yet turned on, I decided to kill two birds with one stone, and drain the roof puddles into the compost bin, recycling the snow water by making compost tea which I then dumped on the onions and garlic and poppies. It worked fairly well, though it took a bit of time. While waiting for the water to drain, Josh asked me to help him out by wiping down and passing the corrugated plastic sheets up to him on the frame of the garden shed.

That was when I discovered what type of corrugated plastic this was. Think election posters that pop up attached by zipties to lampposts all over town during campaign seasons, and you will get the idea. These particular corrugated plastic signs (for that's what they were) had advertised Special 29.99. It's an interesting look. Josh, being creative at recycling, had bought some waterproof white spray paint to give it a cleaner look when he finished screwing them onto the roof. What he did not anticipate was that the spray paint would not stick to the plastic. He plans to buy some different products and experiment, but in the meantime, my newly renovated bike shed has an interesting, but very special look to it.

We both managed to finish up our tasks, the temporary shelter being de-tarped, and the collapsed roof of the gazebo being shored up by long bamboo poles, which will make it easier for me to pick beans and cucumbers, though anyone else in the family may have to duck to pick lettuce underneath. Josh got the garden shed covered and I cleaned it up and hung up all the rakes and hoes and things, planted a row of lettuce, and then we began to do some yardwork.

Our neighbour's ash tree took a real beating in the high winds of the snow storms and freezing rain we had this past winter. On more than one occasion, we heard branches fall and bounce off the roof into the yard. Our internet and phone cables must have been hit, because we suddenly had connection problems with both resulting in a service call to reinstall the lines. The fallen branches were then buried under more snow and ice, so only when it all melted did we see the full damage. There were some rather large branches all around the yard, the equivalent of a young tree's worth. Josh used his machete (he's been waiting for a chance to do this) to strip down the branches and then tied them up in a bundle to leave for garbage collection day. We still have a lot more to collect, chop and tie, but at least part of the yard is looking better.

I may have mentioned in previous posts that part of our springtime work is dealing with the garbage that blows into our yard over the winter. A lot of it ends up in the lilac stand, which lines the edge of our property along the side street rustic. Our house is on a corner lot, a block away from a recessed expressway which creates a bit of a wind tunnel ending at my house and dropping all kinds of plastic and paper garbage. There are also many pedestrians who pass by and I suspect some of them carelessly drop their garbage. Yesterday, I had an hour or so at home at lunch time, and when I walked across my lawn I was mortified and decided to take a bit of time to do a clean  up. I grabbed a garbage bag and a garden glove, and got to work. This year's haul included six or seven water bottles, lots of candy and chip wrappers (including some with Arabic labels and plantain chips), one condom wrapper (glad I had gloves!), three explicit pornographic playing cards (a joker, a queen of spades and one more, I stopped checking), a couple of beer bottles, a few zipties and bits of tarp which were the only things that came from my side of the fence, and lots of cups, plastic bags, paper food wrappers, newspaper, and bits of styrofoam. I filled an entire garbage bag, and I am sure there is lots more under the top layer of leaves that I missed, and will go back to on another day. Truly disgusting! After my labours, my yard looks much more beautiful.