How Monica Spends her Time - and Lots of Money

Monica started a small flower garden a few years ago. We then got a small preformed pond. We'll after fighting with and not liking the preformed pond. We upgraded both the pond and the flower garden. I snapped a few pics of the garden tonight.

The first pic is shot from the Northwest corner looking in.

The second is looking from the North including the pergola (sp?) that I built a couple of years ago.

The third looks from the Northeast corner.

Fourth is a better shot of of the pergola.

Fifth is a shot of the fish.

Last one includes a shot of the entire pond. Thanks to OhioTC18 for a lot of the rocks in the waterfall.

Here are some more pics.

First one is another shot of the fish and if you look close you can see the bottom drain. It really isn't a drain, but an inlet for the one of the pumps to pump water through filters, a UV Sterilizer, and finally to the water fall.

Second pic is the inside of the greenhouse. There are still some flowers that haven't been moved out yet. I still have a some tomato plants that haven't gotten planted yet either. (I was late getting them planted because of family medical problem). If they grow a little, I might try to plant them in the next couple of weeks and see if I can get some "late bloomers."

Next shot is of the back of the greenhouse and my garden. Weeds have taken over my carrots - well basically my carrots didn't come up so I haven't worried about them. Other things need weeded but aren't terrible except for the lettuce.

Monica's garden generates a lot of "waste." So we've started a compost pile. Up until tonight it was literaly a pile in the yard. We've had the poles since last year, but couldn't decide what to put around it. We'll we found this plastic stuff and a junk/clearance store here in town that seemed to be just the thing. It actually said for compost piles. So we finally drove the poles in the ground and put it up tonight.

Next shot is an upclose view of the plastic mesh.

Last shot is another shot of my garden. The corn is coming up, though sparse. Watermelon and cantelope are grow, but slow. Zuchinni that we didn't plant but has come back from last year is doing fantastic.

I'm envious of the greenhouse. It looks like it has the double wall polycarbonate panels? I've always wanted a greenhouse but never wanted to maintain one. Another member, Ice Queen, posted some photos of her greenhouse a couple weeks ago. She has traditional glass, but is located in Wales, UK which has a pretty mild climate so she can get away with a single pane glass and still overwinter in hers.

Bob you are correct on the panels. This greenhouse was a pain in my ass all winter. We got it from Harbor Freight based upon recommendations from other websites that Monica visits. They normally sale it for 7XX. They had it on sale for $599. We then had a 20% off coupon. Brought it down to like $475. It went together and seemed OK for awhile. Then the winds came. We spent a lot of the fall chasing panels and reinstalling them. We bought more clips to hold them in. Tried siliconing + the additional clips and nothing worked. Of course this is after we spent a few hundred dollars on bubble wrap and clips for it for insulation. Finally first of December we gave up and moved the plants to our one shed and put an electric heater in there and left the flourescent light on. Most survived. Ironically a few died when we moved them back to the greenhouse.

Came spring I came up with an idea. I was going to bolt the panels in. Knowing that I should use stainless steel and calculating the cost and not know if it was going to work. I cheapened out and just went to TSC and got regular bolts and if it works, I replace them with ss as they rust. I've put bolts through the center of each panel at each cross piece (top, bottome, and 2 middle pieces). We also siliconed and used more than double the clips it originally came with. So far it has stood up to some pretty tough winds. Another thing I did is on the back wall. The supports came in 2 pieces that they bolted together. It wasn't the strongest joint and it actually started bending a little bit. I bought a piece of rebar and used hose clamps to clamp it to the originally support and cross pieces. It is then wedge into the corners. The back wall no longer moves. Now I've got to figure out someway to heat this thing w/o paying a fortune for copper (either tubing or wire) and w/o paying a fortune to run it.

BTW, did I mention that we live in a wind tunnel?

jwstewar said:

This greenhouse was a pain in my ass all winter. We got it from Harbor Freight based upon recommendations from other websites that Monica visits.

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Note to self: Don't listen to recommendations about "quality" products from Harbor Freight.

Good work man! Looks like you guys have been busy. I really like the pond area. We have a 1/2 acre pond, but it is in sad shape compared to yours.

I have to admit when I first opened this thread , I thought Monica L. was back in the news for something stu-pid again.

Doc said:

I have to admit when I first opened this thread , I thought Monica L. was back in the news for something stu-pid again.

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They're nothing alike.............one is very pretty, the other one knows Bill Clinton.