She's Here! The Greenhouse Has Landed!

 A Very Early Friday Morning and a Very Large Delivery

Well. I did not expect that.

When I say early — I mean early. Most of Friday morning I was still half asleep, which for me at this time of year is not unusual. The body clock does what it wants. But I was not expecting a knock at that particular hour, and I was certainly not expecting what was sitting on the front when I opened the door.

The greenhouse. She'd arrived.

Now. I had been told Friday. Halls had said Friday and I had been quietly counting down the days like a child at Christmas — which at 60 years old I'm not even slightly embarrassed about, because this greenhouse has been a long time coming and the base has been sat there waiting patiently for what feels like forever. The base has been ready. I have been ready. The only thing missing was the greenhouse itself.

And there it was. Boxes. three of them. All stacked up and looking very impressive indeed in that way that flat pack always does before you actually open it and realise quite how many individual pieces are involved.

I stood there for a moment just taking it in. Cup of tea not yet made, still in a state that Sara would describe as "not quite human yet", and genuinely just staring at a pile of boxes like they were the most wonderful thing I'd seen in a good while.

Which honestly — they were.

Now of course the next job is the fun part. Getting the thing unboxed and up on that base. And I use the word fun in the same spirit a man uses it when he's about to tackle something that he knows is going to test his patience, his knees, and his ability to read an instruction booklet written by someone who clearly has never actually tried to build one of these in a back garden.

Sam will be involved. He has been duly informed. Whether he greeted this news with the same level of enthusiasm I did is a matter I will leave diplomatically unanswered.

Iris, I suspect, will supervise. She has a gift for that.

The base is solid. It's been sitting there prepared and level, and I have checked it more times than is probably reasonable for a grown man — but when you have put the work in on a foundation, you want to know it's right. And it is right. So at least that part is not going to cause us any grief.

The build itself — well. That's the next chapter. I am not going to stand here and tell you it will all go smoothly and be up by the end of the weekend, because I have built enough things in my time to know that hubris of that kind always comes back to bite you. What I will say is that it will go up. It will go up on that base. And when it does it is going to make a real difference to what we can do with the growing space back here.

I cannot wait to get the first seeds in there.

More very soon. Get your wellies on.