Look! I Did a Thing!

I don't mean to brag or anything, but it's not just anyone who can claim to have constructed a patio enclosure using nothing but leftover cloth diaper supplies.


The idea is just that I have this covered back patio that, due to the house having been rather haphazardly added onto a couple of times, is very small and narrow and enclosed on three sides. So rather than haul all the plants inside every time there's a threatened freeze, and drag them back out every day to get some sun, maybe I could just keep them here in the shelter of the porch for the winter. With poorly-insulated, eighty-year-old house on three sides, and a nice sheet of 2 mil plastic on the fourth, I doubt it'll ever get down to freezing back there. If it gets really chilly I could plug in a table lamp.

So today I climbed up on the landlord's insanely wobbly ladder and tacked Rip-N-Grip (like Velcro, but a different brand) hook onto the eaves, and then I stitched 12 feet of RNG loop along the edge of the plastic, et voilà! I have an enclosed porch. Tell me I'm not a genius.

Actually I had very little choice, because the addition of a gigantic, aggressive Christmas tree to the already cramped living room brought things to a fairly desperate pass. I can't line up the plants by the front windows like I did last time.

Could I have a Scrooge moment here, please, and state for the record that I do not like having a Christmas tree? Honestly. I'm so over that shit. They take up huge amounts of space, they shed needles that you're still cleaning out from the corners by the time next year's tree arrives, and the ammonia-laden aroma of pine induces the cats to do things that - well, you should probably keep your Christmas presents somewhere else, if you catch my drift. I think it would be fun just to festoon all the plants with tinsel and tiny Christmas ornaments, no?

No. We have to have, not just a tree, but the biggest, fullest, lushest, most magnificent tree on the lot. It completely blocks out the front windows, and now you can only move about the living room by edging carefully sideways. Well, I don't like it. And I just got this place clean, too.

Oh well, I can always hang out on the back porch with my plants. My plants understand me.

2 mil plastic might not be enough.