Greenhouse

Today's the day ..................... for a tale of discovery

This is the view from my greenhouse - the place where I sow seeds in trays and pot plants - a place of tranquility and Radio 4. But it wasn't always like that. In fact when we bought this house, nearly twenty years ago, it was just a dark space at the back of the garage where the big oil storage tank for the central heating was.

A few years later, we changed over to gas central heating and got rid of the big tank and that's when we saw that this part of the garage was lined with plywood boards. We tentatively prised off one of the boards and to our amazement found all these Rennie Mackintosh-like small square panes of glass behind. And it was the same with the roof - the original glass was still there but all hidden by plywood.

It turned out that these were the greenhouses of the original big Victorian house, in whose garden our house had been built in the late 1930s. They must have been quite a sight in their heyday too, with big glass shutters opened by pulleys and heated by some sort of a stove. A proper sort of a hothouse probably full of exotic plants .....................


PS Update on yesterday's tale of woe - the mobile phone has been FOUND! It had been left in Wilkinson's Camera Shop in the centre of town. Thank you for your good wishes - you are really such a nice lot of blippers ......