Fall Garden

I've spent the last 2 days battling the dying garden and preparing for the fall/winter garden. This has involved a decent amount of celebration at the death of the tomato plants and gloating at the tomato plants over their demise. Don't me wrong, I love having enough salsa, pizza sauce, and diced tomatoes for the winter. But holy hell will I be excited to can those last few tomatoes in the next few weeks. The last few on my counter need to ripen a tiny bit more, then I can cook them up and be done!!

I had planted some broccoli, cauliflower, and lettuce in the last 2 months, all of which plants were still a bit small. But we seem to have skipped fall and gone straight to winter- from barely needing the heat on to nightly freeze warnings in only 2 or so weeks. Not enough time for the cold weather plants to grow. But these are my favorite foods and I didn't want to just give up on the plants. Then the lightbulb went off.

Mini greenhouse! Duh! You build a box round the plants with an angled glass top thats hinged. Then you can open the top during the day to let in fresh air, close in the early evening to trap in some heat, and the plants are safe from frost and freezing overnight. I managed to round up all of the supplies for free even.

I tore out the garden by myself yesterday. I went from this:

To this:

In just a few hours, working solo. Today was for phase 1- the biggest part- of the construction of the mini greenhouse. My good friend Joe came over to help out for a few hours and we made some serious progress. I'm thrilled! Now all thats left is installing a glass panel in the side wall that gets all the morning sun (which involves some caulk and 5 minutes), then building the glass top which will be a cakewalk.

(Yeah, I know, I look mad sexy in sweats and a hot pink bandana!)

The mini greenhouse as it is now:

These last 2 days, though, have left me beyond exhausted and in major pain. My max dose of pain meds is barely touching the pain, heating pads aren't helping, rest isn't helping, muscle relaxants aren't helping. I used both of my topical meds (Voltaren gel and a specially compounded topical pain med) on my wrists and got the pain down from a solid 8/10 to a  6/10. I wish the topicals worked anywhere else. I'm desperate enough to try the contortions needed to get them on my back and see if it helps any. I just wish I could still work on a construction project for 16 straight hours, inhale food, then sleep 6 hours, and repeat. Heck, I'd settle for being able to work 2 hours and not collapse at the end. Tomorrow is errands and I have no clue how the hell I'm going to pull that off. I think I'll call my aunt in the morning and see if she can run with me...