Really now, how many things did you have go wrong today? Well, I am here to make you feel better about your rotten day, if you are in that category. And if your not, then just read this and see how good your day was comparatively!!!
This was the first day for the actual construction of my greenhouse after all preliminaries were completed like grading, receiving and unloading the greenhouse kit, purchasing and hauling the concrete and wood, getting my good friend Tony over here to help me, and calling up my part-time employer and telling him I would not be in this week.
Right off the bat, within 15 minutes after Tony arrived at 8 AM. trouble started. I had borrowed an 3-point hitch auger to help me drill the 22 holes I needed for the greenhouse/butterfly
flighthouse, each of which was 30 inches deep.
I had never hooked one up and had to go through a learning curve which cost me a snapped 3/4 inch 5 inch pin that nearly hit Tony in the brain! After I wiped the sweat off of my brow and continued on, finally getting the device to work, the tractor broke down. The transmission froze up. I worked on it for 2 hours almost burning out the clutch in my truck as I tried to haul it up to level ground.
Meanwhile, Tony worked on digging the first hole for the greenhouse post by hand. He hit a rock, believe it or not, here at the North Fork Rock Nursery, at 12 inches down and had to dig out the hole twice the diameter in order to get it out. I still was having the stress of my life trying to free up the transmission with bolts, steel plates, oil soaked hands, and a lot of cussing.
When I finally got the tractor moving, I realized that I still had work to do on it and had to take the plate off again and beat things with a hammer. 20 minutes later, I ran out of gas before I could dig the first hole.
Before that, I realized that the grade was off where the greenhouse site was and I had to grade it with the tractor. A process similar to brushing your teeth with a shovel. In other words, something that takes a lot of practice and luck and shouldn't be done in the first place.
It was getting late in the afternoon by this time and I started noticing that my neck was burning. Yep, I had severe sunburn going on. Not having a minute to myself, my exposed skin to the clear blue, 80 degree temps, had played havoc on me, burning me to a crisp! Plus, I was getting dehydrated and not thinking straight.
Now comes the fun part. The second hole I was to dig with the now working tractor and auger, I hit a rock again. It cost us another hour of digging, pounding, and cussing. We finally got it set and called it a day at 7pm. this evening.
There is always a silver lining and I am still trying
desperately to figure out what it was today. Maybe it was the fact that Tony helped me and didn't expect to get paid. Maybe it was that it didn't rain on us. Maybe it was the fact that if I didn't have a bad day, I wouldn't have any day at all!
