No Greenhouse!

A weirdo project

I do not want this greenhouse, my husband says.

But he already knows the score. The greenhouse is happening.

Why are you bringing trash home? my mother in law says. Just throw it away.

I bet that doesn’t actually look elegant at all, my best friend - somebody who I actually thought would support me on a wild gardening boondoggle! - says. But she has already redeemed herself by making fun of a bunch of janky AI-generated images that my husband sent me, trying to picture (and perhaps oppose?) the greenhouse in the spot that I’ve chosen. The AI alternately distorted it to be sized for gnomes, or weirdly flat, or otherwise quite different from the actual bare-bones 6x12 polycarbonate and aluminum windows-only enclosure that it is.

Undeterred, I accept the greenhouse as a gift from my friend and neighbor, the owner of Quincy’s first Miyawaki forest, which is a setup where you plant a bunch of different kinds of little trees all together to let them grow up to compete and collaborate like a classroom of children. My Miyawaki forest friend became the victim of her own success, her greenhouse space overly shaded for its’ needs, so she decided to pass it on to us.

My yard-adjacent neighbor unfortunately wasn’t so keen on it once it got here. I will keep the exact interaction to myself because I generally like this woman, but let’s just say that communication on the day it was installed could have gone better, and it was very hard not to text her later and say here’s my shitty greenhouse and your shitty shed, in one picture.

Because clearly I am that petty.

What I didn’t tell her, and might at some point, is that if this is middle age, and my middle age midlife crisis looks like a she-shed (a she-greenhouse?) in the middle of my back lawn, please just look away and let me have it, ok?

You’ve got to understand that not too long ago I was young and did everything I was supposed to. I got the degree, the husband (followed by a second husband I actually wanted to have babies with), the series of low pay, high social justice nonprofit jobs that treated me like shit. Now I’m in this truncated liminal space while trying to spiff up a resume that looks like Swiss cheese and gets treated like curdled milk because *gasp* I stayed home with the babies I had during a pandemic and didn’t work for pay.

None of it feels seamless or commensurate. I am mad about all of it. I fail at what I’m supposed to be doing a million times a day because success is not allowed, and then they cancel my first mammogram (which to be fair I was trying to avoid anyway) as they don’t want me inconveniently squirting milk across the table.

I’d like to point out that I’m not reacting to this unfair and strange reality by going off and having an affair with someone in their 20’s, or deciding to run a marathon, doing some extreme weight loss diet, starting or quitting day drinking, or any of that stuff. Or switching out my second husband for a third husband that actually finishes home remodeling projects - which I did tell him that I briefly consider some days - until I realize all I actually want is the money to hire a handyman who goes back to his own home at the end of the day.

Unfortunately that requires me getting a decently paying job.

And then here we are, back at square one.

I’m just a lady in her early 40’s, who had babies late, haphazardly trying to re-enter the workforce, writing a blog on a notes app on her phone while sweeping up crumbs of banana bread, pulling the baby off something dangerous she climbed up on, and listening to John Prine’s Angel from Montgomery while (not so secretly) dreaming of a greenhouse in my yard.

The first purpose of the greenhouse is escape. So that when everyone in my house drives me nuts this winter I might go out there alone to look at some plants or feel some warm sunlight or read a book or something with nobody touching me.

But I know damn well that this part is already a pipe dream that won’t work. The plan will fail not because the greenhouse is too lame or the yard is too small (although I won’t argue against the factuality of either). It’ll get derailed because I’ve already proved I’m some kind of a Mother Nature bitch and the interior will be far too cool, to where they will all want to come join me for a what is mom doing and can I help? party in my greenhouse.

Even my neighbor. Just watch and see.

But meantime, like John Prine said (before the poor man died of Covid), Just give me one thing/Something to hold onto.

You’re going to love the greenhouse, the neighbor who gifted it to me says. I can’t wait to see what you’re going to do with it!

I see it’s not only an eclectic person who would say I’m gonna plant a forest (and/or a greenhouse) in my small urban backyard, but a person with vision.

Thankfully she was not the only one who understood. My kids did too. They loved the idea of a greenhouse. Which is always a good indicator.

If you run an idea past a kid, they will let you know if it sparks joy or not.

Was it a kid that said let’s mow down everything and have it flat and green? No, it was not. It was someone much older and with a lot more money than sense. The king of France, while setting up Versailles, to be exact.

Ever since then we’ve been trying to be like him, without even knowing why, and obsessing over having pristine lawns. Nobility too, but - like my city councilor says - where all the castles touch.

Even though modern rich people have moved on to other things much more sinister than lawn care, like stealing public funds and transferring it to offshore crypto, or visiting pedophile islands for networking purposes only, the lawn still signals both wealth and respectability to those a bit late to the game.

Although clearly we’d be better off of if rich people got back to mowing their lawns themselves. Which they might eventually have to, along with watching their own kids and elders, if deportations are kept up at the rate they are going.

Why are you putting this in the middle of your backyard? my sister-in-law asks, as my husband and my brother-in-law stand there, installing it, my husband occasionally muttering son of a bitch! at a bolt or piece of framing. Your kids won’t have any place to play!

But my kids and I stand excitedly by, watching and waiting, eating the first of the ripening Concord grapes and sharing a crunchy and slightly-too-green pear off the tree, with an answer.

We’re gonna play in the greenhouse! my daughter responds. She sees the vision.

Clearly many people still do not. They think kids need bare lawns for running on. And because the French aristocracy is still involved, at least in our minds, they also need for me to have a lawn adjacent to theirs, for them. Because it isn’t enough for only them to have one. We both have to have a uniform idea of respectability in order for it to work.

As if that whole concept didn’t die for me years ago, after growing up poor, or getting divorced, or getting fired from a dream job that had turned into a nightmare, or one of many other humiliating experiences.

Like marrying a high school sweetheart, I now believe the lawn is an invention best left for the movies, and if you try it in real life you may learn the hard way that you’ve already outgrown it.

Or maybe it is the nature of women and matrescense that we grow from and outgrow the person we were before we had babies, no matter who we’ve had them with.

So why not just start a blog and build myself a greenhouse? And hey, one of them seems to be going decently already.

Maybe it seems like a greenhouse is the wrong priority, or I’m defending it too much. Pressuring it into existence.

I could weed my existing garden, get rid of all the hot summer overgrowth.

I could schedule more hours at the gym for a belly that a year out is probably not qualifying as postpartum anymore.

I could job search more intensely, knowing it’s less than a month until my children go into childcare.

I could commit to a big home project, like repairing the window trim on my sun porch, or reglazing the antique windows or painting the back steps. All of which look crappy and need doing.

I could repair my front door, which sadly didn’t hold the careful wood filler patches I did a few years back, and also now looks kinda bad.

There are so many sensible things I could do in this seaside town where the weather is hard on exterior things.

But my heart has decided it wants this greenhouse, and here we are.

Also, the stakes are low. If the greenhouse ever loses its’ appeal for me, it is easy to back out of the relationship. I can always get someone else to do what I got my husband to do. Come dismantle and take it away for free. Then sprinkle some grass seed and mow it and it’ll be like it was never there at all.

I’ve told him this, and that’s why he begrudgingly set it up.

Yet I don’t think the impermanence of a greenhouse structure is what scares certain people.

It’s the latent concern that I’m already thinking outside the box to even consider it and I’ll throw people off their own rubric in the process.

Perhaps I will bring down the neighborhood, with my chaos and my plants. Maybe I’ll like it too much, then be out there in it all the time, neglecting domestic responsibilities and doing weird things that I couldn’t do on a 6x12 piece of bare lawn. Maybe I’ll even influence my other friends to say fuck this lawn business, I too want a she-shed, or a photography workshop, or a tiki bar, or something else besides a lawn here. Who knows where it might end, this slippery slope.

Perhaps in Harbor Freight, looking at a little 6x8 number described in reviews as a great seed starter whose instructions need to be a little more helpful, yet providing plenty of room for the casual gardener.

Next thing you know, it’ll be bedlam, dogs and cats, living together among the greenhouse people. Nobody will know what is respectable or who is in charge anymore.

And lord knows we can’t have that.

Nonetheless, I do want to be clear that despite how it may look from the outside, I do have some standards and a hierarchy I adhere to and would never steal my husband’s happiness or my children’s place to play for my own garden.

Besides, people, kids especially, don’t need postage stamp sized lawns like mine. What they need is something to do. And if there are garden paths to walk amongst interesting things, they’ll get out there and start to look at wildlife, forage for leaves and berries (this is definitely the time to teach plant identification, and what is and is not safe to eat), and get in touch with the hidden instincts they’ve harbored since infancy, as easily tapped into as the search for mother’s milk.

In all my garden spaces the kids’ needs are well-incorporated. We have a patio with a small slide on it. We have an arbor hung with a spinner swing. We have a sectioned off and gated portion of the driveway with another slide and lots of sidewalk chalk and a fire pit used for roasting marshmallows under adult supervision. Next to that they even have their own kids’ garden, which is new this year and where they can (and do) grow what they want, with a little entrance gate. We also live close walking distance to a park where they actually have a large mown lawn to run on, with a ball, if they so choose.

And soon the greenhouse will have a tiny picnic table in it, for cold weather kiddie picnics. A place that’s 20-30° warmer on sunny winter days.

Which isn’t anything we want now, but come Christmas? You betcha.

Also, it’s been my experience that a busy man is a happy man, no matter how much he complains about feeling needed.

The greenhouse is going to need a floor, I tell my husband, after the walls and half of the roof are up. I’ve calculated it, and $150 of pea gravel at 2” deep would be 27 bags, a little over half a ton.

You’ve got to be shitting me, I’m not doing that! he says, wiping away sweat and eating the lunch I gave him.

Ok, I say. I’ll just put down some cardboard to suppress the grass, and one of those plastic outdoor rugs for this season, and we can discuss it next season, if you feel up for it then.

Why are you putting down cardboard? You could just put down weed barrier, which you’ll need under the gravel anyway, he says.

You’re right, I say. We should prepare for the gravel.

We talk in marriage counseling about balancing executive functioning and mood, responsibility and fun, plans and emergencies. How to be a team against the world rather than fighting each other for resources. How to reconnect when we have been too busy raising babies and losing elders to go on dates.

How plainly asking for what you desire is a vulnerable act, and criticism is a learned habit that can be replaced with earnest requests.

Even if you think it’s odd, I really want to try this greenhouse thing, babe, I say.

I can’t see into the future. I only see what’s right in front of me, he says. And this seems like a lot of work, but ok.

Yes, I say. An investment that I bet will also be a lot of fun. Fun you can’t see yet, but will get to participate in soon.

He already knows he doesn’t have any ordinary wife, and that I am a woman who, despite structural barriers, has an eye for opportunity and eventually gets something good out of her circumstances.

An ordinary wife wouldn’t be going to political events with a baby, or getting a glitter in her eye while saying she worked really hard on a local DA candidate questionnaire and forum with a number of other civically nerdy people for a local get-out-the-vote nonprofit, and reminding everybody in Norfolk County to go vote in the local primary election on September 1st, using a voter guide if you need one.

An ordinary wife would not be fighting with losers on the internet and saying oh, look the hate group hated my questionnaire too. Said they were reporting the whole volunteer group to the IRS for endorsing candidates, using a silly AI-generated fake tip letter. Except they couldn’t actually tell which candidate or issues it was supposedly biased towards, because - plot twist - there wasn’t one!

What my husband doesn’t yet see is that this is no ordinary greenhouse either.

If any greenhouse ever is ordinary - and I’ve now been looking at setups online long enough to say that I’m not sure they ever are - then this is not just explainable as some midlife crisis impulse. Or some kind of a practical and farmerly way to extend the growing season. Or even a family weirdo project. And really, what family doesn’t need a family weirdo project?!

It is about having trust and hope and making an investment in a small patch of the earth and my own instincts in these uncertain times. And isn’t that what we all want? To, as a relatively powerless human with a short lifespan, capture a bit of sunshine and warmth and happiness for ourselves and the next generation, and maybe plant and harvest some free food while we’re here?

Plus, given that New England is half winter, who up here doesn’t start to crave a sunny space to do in it, a reprieve from the cold, in which to do outdoor things without freezing hands and a thick coat?

Which, when I put it that way, shows it’s not about me being a pushy weirdo with an undersize lawn and an oversized greenhouse, but a question of why anyone up here with an opportunity and space to replace lawn with greenhouse would choose to be a weirdo without one.

Because maybe, if we are lucky, while I try to suss out my future and my marriage, regain some sanity and raise my kids, we will also grow some vegetables.

And I already know if I show up to places like my neighbor’s house (or my mother in law’s) in November, waving a large zucchini or a bunch kale (or whatever it is we decide to grow), she will have to admit that I am not crazy, but have in fact won the game of life.