Well, the glass is finally on the greenhouse. Yahoo! All I have to do now is finish wrapping it with plastic sheeting to keep the snow out of it. You can see that we’ve put our bikes and various other summer paraphernalia in there to keep them out of the snow; but later on this winter I’ll go in and start building shelves in preparation for spring (and I’ll have to find someplace to put the bikes meanwhile. Won’t that be fun.).

These sheets of glass are each 4’x7’4”, except for the one on the side of the building which is about three inches wider. They came from the local credit union. When they had just started construction, I happened in, and just happened to be talking to the branch manager, and just happened to notice they would have to tear out their old windows, and happened to ask what were they planning to do with them, and she said “I don’t know” and I said “Can I have them” and she said “Sure” and thanks to some friends who know how to move glass, I got them. Thank goodness for friends! Thank goodness for “coincidence” that has me happen upon thousands of dollars worth of free glass.

In fact the panel that’s nearest you in this shot still has the bank hours silkscreened on the inside. It will cast a “Lobby hours 9am-5pm” on our sprouting beans and lettuce next spring. That’s fine by me; there’s a lot of money in these glass windows and I’m glad I didn’t have to pay for them.

It’s worth it to ask. All they can say is no. It’s also worth it not to be too proud to accept other people’s perfectly good castoffs. The shirt I’m wearing right now would probably retail for $60, but my wife got it at a $3-a-bag sale at the thrift store, which means it cost about twenty-five cents. Yahoo!