Time (in a Greenhouse)

The concept of time, in its various guises, seems to be a theme lately. Everything, from the hours it takes for the sun to glide across the garden in the backyard, feeding the leaves that feed the plants that will, in turn, feed us, to the days between nestling a seed into the earth and the reward of seeing its tiny cotilydons pushing up toward the light, to the months of infinitesimal increases (or decreases) in the temperature of the soil, is inextricably linked to the passage of time.

And yet, Einstein proved that time is not linear. I can't help thinking about our forebears, and it wasn't all that long ago, to whom the concept of "ownership" of time would have been completely foreign. They were at the mercy of time -- or, rather, someone else's concept of it. Whoever owned the clock, owned time.

Even now, in our cyber world, for all our understanding of it, we are completely and utterly unable to have any impact on it. Except, maybe, in a greenhouse. Actually, we can't really have any impact upon time -- but, by making slight changes to the environment, we can definitely have a very real impact on the length of the time we can grow various things each year. In fact, we can actually produce things to eat, in our own backyards, all year. That, it seems to me, is the purpose of a greenhouse. It can, of course, be used for starting plants earlier than would otherwise be possible. But the real value, for my money, lies in the possibility of extending the time that tomatoes, say, can be grown at home. And in improving the quality of the produce we enjoy.

So we experimented with a greenhouse. It didn't, ultimately, work out very well -- but only because the only part of the yard we could put it in at the time didn't get enough sunlight to support plant life. Still, I consider the experiment a success, in that we learned a great deal in the process, and it helped us along on the journey toward growing our own food.

10/16/10

We've moved the greenhouse (all 4 x 6 of it!!) to the garden. It now resides on a raised bed DH built for it. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do with it, now that it's in a place that gets adequate light!!