The plantry

One of the things that “sold” this house for me (to me?) was a tiny enclosed south side entry porchlet/breezeway.  Nevermind that when we first looked at it, the entry was painted a bilious yellow and full of children’s shoes.  What I envisioned was a jungle – the greenhouse where my plants would live during the winter.   It’s perfectly bright with windows facing the three good directions.  On a sunny day during the winter it can warm up into the 70’s making it a perfectly passive solar heater which ratchets up the temperature of the whole house a degree or two when I leave the kitchen door open.  Night flips the coin to the chilly side.  The porch is uninsulated and although the windows have thermal panes, the 2 outside doors are bent and abused crappy metal screen doors with gappy sliding glass panes.

Last fall I repainted the room – from the bilious yellow to a bilious green and obnoxious teal.  Stand back, Martha.  (Some other day I will try again to match the lovely colors in my head.)  This summer we bought a full glass paned kitchen door that lets the porch light in.  When we buy the winning ticket, I’ll ask Z to enlarge the porch and convert it to a full greenhouse with working vents and drains in the floor.  For now, I’d settle on replacing the outside doors.  And until then I’ll probably just “winterize” them again with blow dryer plastic and draft dodgers.

Before my $15 hi/low thermometer stopped working, it actually never registered lower than 37°F.  Even so, last year I kept an electric oil-filled radiator out there for the really cold nights (insurance that cost an extra $30/mo.).  And the plants seemed to thrive (read: survive).  Everything out there can take it cold – the rosemary, lavender, phormium, geraniums and various oddball New Zealand shrubberies prefer to be on the cold side rather than come all the way into the house (which even at 58-62° is too warm for them).  Good news is things like the agave, lemon, and orchid cactus don’t seem to mind it at all either.

I like to have a name for everything and have had trouble naming the plant room.  I certainly can’t be calling it that.  “The Vestibule” has a nice ring to it – not too high faluttin’ or too low – but only the dog dons vestments out there.  Porchlet?  No.  Entry?  yawn.  The polls are open for write-in candidates and until someone suggests a winner I will have to call it The Plantry.