The Post-It Note And The Greenhouse

For years my lovely wife, Pam, and I had an ongoing conversation. One that I wouldn’t leave alone and she didn’t really want to deal with. We were both working full time jobs, really busy, commuting almost 2 hours a day on top of our 8+ hour shifts.

You see, Pam is slightly older than I am and I had this nagging question for her. My logic was sound to me.

“You’re going to retire earlier than I will, so what is your retirement plan? It will be a lot easier for me to work around yours than for you to have to retire around me still working”.

We went back and forth for years until one evening I asked her again and told her, “You know I’m not going to give up until I get an answer.” Well, that got a bit of a rise out of her and she grabbed a stack of Post-it notes and wrote:

Grow Things

Get a Little Dog

Write!!!!

She looked at me and said, “Now I have a retirement plan,” then stuck the Post-it note on the side of her computer screen, where it sat for years. Conversation over!

Pam has her Master Gardener’s ticket and is a very accomplished and published writer. She also had a little bichon shih tzu dog when I met her, who sadly passed away a number of years ago. This looks like a great plan to me!

Fast forward to 2020. I was laid off due to Covid. Pam was working hard at her management job in the mining services industry, navigating the constantly-changing landscape of her corporation’s daily – at times  – changes to standard operating procedures (SOPs) and safety protocols.

We were also in the middle of buying our house and land. We actually got an accepted offer on March 11, and the world as we knew it shut down on March 12.

As the winter evolved into spring and finally early summer, the snow melted and we could start making plans for our new home. I was stuck at home alone every day while Pam was at work in an ever more stressful environment. I decided to build her a greenhouse so that she could start to think about retiring.

We had bought an old ‘garage-in-a-box’ frame for $50 the previous summer from the local buy and sell, and had just about all of the materials that we would need for me to build it. The area next to the garden where we wanted the greenhouse to sit is very uneven so I thought that I would start with a subfloor that I could level and then secure the frame on top.

At first I had no idea how to accomplish this, especially as the feet would settle into the  ground over time with the weight of the structure. Then Dawson (Dodge, The Town of the City of Dawson) saved me! I had lived up in Dodge for quite some time and remembered that many of the buildings up there are built on pilings! So I staked out where the greenhouse would go and used the highest part of the area as my starting point.

I built the subframe in four sections, each being 6 1/2 feet by 12 1/2 feet long as the frame was 12 X 24. It worked like a charm and in no time I had a nice, flat, 13X25 foot floor next to the garden.

I have to say that as a pro musician for years, the thought did cross my mind of just stopping there and using that awesome space as either a stage or dance floor. But no! This is for Pam’s retirement plan, so I pushed on. Besides, we were supposed to be in our ‘covid bubble’ so we couldn’t throw a massive party with live music, anyway.

I still wasn’t 100 percent sure how I would turn the frame into an enclosed greenhouse, but Pam was so excited every day when she got home from work to see the progress that I just pressed on. In no time the frame was assembled and secured to the foundation.

This is where Google became one of my best problem solvers. I learned that a roll of 6 mil poly was 105” wide, 8’6”. Also that Canadian Tire had opaque tarps sized 10X12 feet for $20 each. I grabbed my measuring tape and ran out to check a few things. Sure enough! If I run some strapping here at the top then two tarps will cover the roof and the poly will cover the walls in one piece. A few more runs of strapping to secure the poly and it looks like this will work just great!

The next thing to figure out was building the end walls. With my construction skills and a bit of dusting off of my trigonometry, which I really hadn’t used much since high school, I made some rough blueprints, pulled out the table saw and got to work.

Over the next few days it all went together without a hitch. Everything held together with staples, tuck tape, zip ties and a few sheet metal screws. We had a greenhouse! Pam was so happy the day that I finished that we spent the evening just sitting in there with the dog, having a couple of beers and celebratory ‘nips’.

I got busy building some raised planter beds. I mean, who would want to be bending over to work in their retirement? We had some old kitchen cupboards in a shed out back that I converted into a workstation and got started mixing soil and filling the beds.

That summer of 2020 will forever go down as one of our most enjoyable ever. Our new home and our new greenhouse! Watching the plants grow, enjoying our evenings together in there just talking about the future. It was our respite from the craziness of the world and Covid and it was one step closer to making Pam’s retirement a reality. It became our sanctuary.

That first summer, we were thrilled to watch our bounty grow: beets, carrots, beans, cucumbers, squash, radishes, basil, sage, dill and parsley. I built some ground-level outside planters where we grew potatoes, strawberries and raspberries.

Our garden had grown over but in the winter of 2020-21 we bought a great little compact tractor with a rototiller attachment and resurrected the garden in the summer of 2021.

The greenhouse roof takes a bit of a beating every winter, and every spring I head into town and buy two new Canadian Tire tarps to re-do it. I think this spring the price had gone up to $24 each and I also had to replace the poly in some spots. A small price to pay for our greenhouse that has cost us less than $400 to build and maintain for four wonderful summers of enjoyment and bushels of fresh, organic and healthy produce. It really does taste so much better than store-bought produce.

At Christmas time in 2020, Pam decided that it was time to retire. Every year since then we get our seeds started upstairs in the big south facing patio window. We follow the Yukon Planting Calendar and the first things to get started are the tomatoes, precisely on March 15.

By the time we are ready to harden the plants and move them into the greenhouse, we usually have close to 200 tomatoes, 100 peppers of all varieties, plus cabbage, brussels sprouts, cucumbers, squash and three or four different herbs and spices ready to go. It’s always an exciting day when we start to seed again and start thinking about spring around the corner and the excitement of a new year of growth. Looking at the greenhouse through the cold and dark days of the winter always fills us with hope and gives us a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel.

It was funny. This last March Pam was in hospital and not speaking very well. The Doctor asked her what date it was. I told the Doc that since Pam’s been retired, we have to usually look at our computer to figure out what day it is, let alone the date. The Doc then asked, “Well, do you know what year it is?” “2024,” Pam said.

“Great, do you know what month?” “It’s March,” she replied. “Well done! Now what is the date?”. Pam was stumped. I looked at her and said, “It’s tomato day.” “MARCH 15th!” she yelled. That’s my girl! As Bruce Springsteen sings, “from small things mama, big things one day come.” Never count out the power of a slightly-perturbed but determined lady with a Post-it note and pen in her hand.