Reflections on the Second Week of Winter – Ups and Downs with Mr. Hooper 

Spence and His Portable Greenhouse

Spence, with a springy step, toted the carton containing pieces for his portable greenhouse to the south garden. I watched my husband through the sliding glass door of our warm great room. He set the carton beside the black plastic he’d spread on the ground and pulled out pieces of hollow steel tubing―curved, straight, and connectors. Like a child with a box of Tinkertoys, he fitted a connector between two curves and held the half hoop at arm’s length for a moment. Setting his construction on the black plastic, he rummaged in the box for more pieces.

I fetched my camera and bundled for a sun-peak-a-booing end of December Sunday. Then I ambled outside to take pictures of Spence. The shutter release clicked breaking the silence of his concentration on steel pieces. After connecting the half hoops with jointed legs, he attached two pairs of hoops and legs with five side pieces.

My chilled nose and toes convinced me I’d been outside long enough. I put the cap on the lens and walked toward the house.

Spence looked up. “It’s good you’re here. You can help me put the cover on.” He attached the fourth hoop to complete the 11.5 by 6.5 by 6.5 foot frame and fetched the heavy plastic cover―clear with crisscrossing, green reinforcement strands.

Together we unfolded the cover. Stepping inside the greenhouse, we reached outside the frame to hold the opposite ends of the cover then lifted. The cover snuggled against the side of the curved hoop. We tugged. The cover slid up an inch. We adjusted our grips and tugged again. The cover moved a half inch.

Spence frowned. “Maybe the two of us can’t do this.”

With experience pulling new pantyhose over damp-after-swim legs, I gritted my teeth. “Of course we can.” I pulled harder and the cover slid half a foot. “But having our grown nieces and children here would help.”

Adjusting and readjusting our grip on the plastic, we tugged the cover, inch by inch, over the frame. Then we aligned the seams in the cover with the steel supports and fastened the cover to the frame with Velcro ties. Grinning wider than a jack-’o-lantern, Spence paced inside his greenhouse.

I left him placing cement blocks on the bottom edges of the cover. While I warmed up inside and downloaded photos, he carried plant shelves from the deck to his greenhouse, set a small table beside the shelves, and placed a thermometer on the table.

His grin hadn’t diminished by the time he opened the front door and toed off his boots. “My winter greens are ready to go out. NOW.” Spence pointed to the chilly basement where trays of kale, bok choy, tatsoi, and mizuna nestled under plant lights. “But I need to monitor the temperature first. I don’t want to kill the seedlings by setting them out too soon.”

Bok Choy and Mizuna Seedlings Waiting for the Greenhouse

The next day, New Year’s Eve, dawned cloudy. Despite an all day rain, Spence slipped into his boots, grabbed a stocking knit cap, and picked up a temperature/humidity gauge. “I’m going to visit Mr. Hooper.”

The Sesame Street character? I scrunched my forehead. “Mr. Hooper died in the 1980s, Spence.”

He turned the door knob and shook his head. “Not the character. My hoop house. Mr. Hooper.”

An hour later he returned and announced, “I had fun in there with the shelves―even though it doesn’t have any plants.”

After dark, while others prepared for New Year’s Eve celebrations, Spence took off his work clothes and settled on the sofa with his clipboard. He sketched designs of stakes and ties to better secure his hoop house to the ground.

About ten o’clock, wind chimes clanged, rain pounded the roof, and a south west wind howled around our log house.

Spence put his designs on the coffee table, fetched his pocket flashlight, and stepped out the door.

I swallowed a mouthful of celebratory popcorn and called after him. “Where are you going in your long underwear and stocking feet?”

He stuck his head back inside, and, with an expression that meant isn’t it obvious, said, “I’m gonna check on Mr. Hooper.”

“In the rain? In the dark?”

He held up the flashlight. “I can see from the deck.”

Wind gusted, rain slanted onto the porch, and Spence came back with soggy socks. To the tune of “The Star Spangled Banner,” he sang “Mr. Hooper’s still there.”

Stifling a laugh, I went to bed.

Spence’s sneeze woke me, and the clock chimed midnight. “Happy New Year,” I told him.

He didn’t return the greeting. In a deflated voice he said, “The hoop house blew down.”

“How do you know?” I peaked around the curtain. “It’s dark.”

“I heard it crash at eleven. I checked with the flashlight.” He sighed. “It’s flat.”

New Year’s morning, I checked Weather Underground for the wind speeds on New Year’s Eve. At 11:00, the wind blew at 22 mph (35 kph) and gusted at 39 mph ( 63 kph). In the next hour, wind speed increased. Not a normal rain storm.

Downed Hoop House

I took my camera outside, moved half a dozen cement blocks, and photographed the downed hoop house. It looked like the deflated plastic holiday figures littering neighbors yards. Could Spence put the pieces back together? Would his stake and tie plan provide enough grounding?

While I downloaded my photos and watched through the sliding glass door, he trudged to the wreckage. Spence studied the hollow steel tubes, examined connections, and checked the cover. A half hour later, he carried the cover to the basement, walked upstairs, and, in a matter-of-fact voice, gave a report. “The plastic is intact. All the connecting pieces are broken. Seventy-five percent of the steel pieces are bent and unusable.”

“Do you want to reorder the support pieces from the company?” I opened my email receipt file to find the company’s information.

“If we replaced them, we’d have the same problem.” He stared out the window at the shelves toppled onto their sides. “The design is fine. The hollow steel pipes are not.” His gaze changed to the end of the south garden. “The kiwi trellis is higher than the hoop house and didn’t get any wind damage. It’s made of PVC pipes and joints. He left the great room saying, “The hoop house has become a project. I’ll replace the hollow steel pipes with PVC.”

“Yeah!” I cheered.

He came back into the room. “No. Boo.”

For three days, Spence tinkered and made trips to Home Depot. He emailed our son Charlie warning him not to hit the sawhorses at the end of the gravel driveway.

Sawhorses?

Spence Heating PVC

A sawhorse and plywood contraption greeted my return from a Pennwriters meeting Saturday. Spence, wearing safety glasses, bent over the contraption. With gloved hands, he moved a ten inch section of a PVC pipe back and forth above a heat gun spewing hot air and a whooshing noise.

“Just in time,” he said. “I’m curving the last of eight hoops.”

“You’re working out here in the cold?”

“Yeah. I didn’t want to burn anything down―like the porch or the house.”

After exchanging the bag of writing folders for my camera, I gaped at his persistence. Heat and bend. Heat and bend. Heat and bend the rigid PVC pipe. He heated until the pipe turned taffy consistency. Section by section, he curved the five foot pipe then tucked it into his homemade frame. He pushed the last pipe close to the frame with a line of shims. “The pipes aren’t pretty, but they might work.”

Inflexible PVC pipes replacing pencil-point-thin steel tubes that I could bend with my bare hands? Of course his new frame would work.

“The next test . . .” Spence turned off the heat gun. “. . . is whether the plastic cover will fit over the PVC frame.”

Meanwhile, in the chilly basement, six flats of winter greens wait. Their roots poke through bottom drainage holes while their leaves stretch toward grow lights. And Spence started four more flats of greens.

Last Hoop in Frame