In the fall of 2024, after years of becoming increasingly leaky, the glass roof of the greenhouse was replaced with a twin wall polycarbonate roof. It took two months, not counting the years I spent figuring out how to actually do it (and wishing it were possible to keep the glass roof).
The caulk and butyl tape that kept the glass panes of the original roof in place made the roof difficult to maintain. The panes would slip a quarter of an inch, an inch, or a foot, leaving gaps for rain to pour into the greenhouse. To fix one slipped pane required unsealing and resealing not just one pane but between two and eight panes. One would think that if they are slipping it would be easy to get them off to reseal, but NO, that was not the case. While the caulk and butyl tape did lose their sealing powers after a few decades, it was only in a few spots. The rest of the caulk and tape stuck so well to the wood and glass that it was very hard to move the glass without breaking it. I decided that the only way to keep the greenhouse functional and prevent it from falling apart was to get rid of the glass roof.
Twin wall polycarbonate panels are used often on greenhouses now. They do not require caulk and are long-lasting. (Too long, if you don’t want to be contributing to the world’s microplastic problem.) The trick for me was figuring out how exactly to cut the polycarbonate panels for my particular roof that had specifically been made to hold glass panes and that had two different slopes and also six large, openable windows.
The good news is that once the glass, caulk, and butyl tape were removed, the rest of the roof — the wood frame — was in nearly perfect condition and very sturdy. I’m sure the frame breathed a sigh of relief to have the much lighter-weight polycarbonate on it instead of the heavier glass panes.
During most rains now, there are no leaks at all inside the greenhouse. It’s completely dry! During very heavy rains with wind, a small amount of water splashes into the greenhouse in a few places, not enough to be a problem. It is a greenhouse after all — I splash more water around when I water my plants.
Here are photos from the roof work:
Greenhouse roof in 2014, freshly painted. Unfortunately in the subsequent 10 years, the paint and wood condition deteriorated with age and weather. Worse, many of the glass panes slipped, causing leaks everywhere inside the greenhouse when it rained.
Sept 8, 2024. Official start of roof replacement. In this photo one of the six roof windows has been taken off and one pane has been removed. The other pane slipped out on its own a couple of years ago.
Some of the wood was in bad condition.
Another view of the roof before it was replaced. The missing pane half slipped out many years ago. I managed to pull it the rest of the way out a year or so ago.
Two slipped panes. There were 8-10 slipped panes by 2024.
One of the windows/vents. The wood has seen better days.
The same window, closer up.
Two strips of wood on the upper slope removed. The glass panes are still well-seated in butyl tape and caulk. Most of the time it was a struggle to get them out -- but much easier if you didn't mind if they broke during the process. Only 20% of the panes came off unbroken.
This is one of the 2x2s that makes up the roof rafters and that supported the glass. The glass was attached on its bottom side to the 2x2 with butyl tape and caulk, and on the top with more butyl tape and caulk to the thin strips of wood.
One of the piles of butyl tape, caulk, and broken glass from the old roof.
Some of the nails from the old roof. I finally got my tetanus booster while working on this roof replacement -- it had been 24 years since my last one.
Piles of broken glass and wood from the roof.
Removing glass from the old roof.
Glass removal in progress.
Glass removal in progress.
Glass removal in progress.
A lot of caulk and glass fell to the floor while removing the roof.
Glass removal in progress.
One half of the old roof completely removed.
Half of the old roof gone.
Half of the old roof gone.
The windows were cleaned up in the garage. Some wood was replaced and quite a few pieces were patched with two part wood epoxy.
Bending the window flashing without a brake (tool for bending metal) was tricky but I got it done.
Cutting the twin wall polycarbonate. The cat is helping.
The polycarbonate for the windows was the first to be cut and attached. Note that the rafters have also been painted, at least the parts that would be difficult or impossible to paint once the roof is on.
Measure measure measure. Even after dark.
The twin wall polycarbonate panels drying after being cut with the jigsaw and then hosed to remove little bits of plastic.
The first half of the roof is half done.
Half the roof is done.
View of the polycarbonate roof from inside the greenhouse.
The completed first side. I did have to take the three windows off one more time later to put on the metal flashing and add more screws. Also, the metal flashing that goes on the peak is not attached yet -- that had to wait until everything was done.
One side done.
The second side now has all the glass, caulk, and butyl tape removed.
The second side has been painted.
View from inside the greenhouse. One side of the roof is completely open; the other side has the new polycarbonate roof.
View from inside the greenhouse. One side of the roof is completely open; the other side has the new polycarbonate roof.
Putting on the last panels.
Finally it's finished! The metal peak is back on. Metal flashing has been attached to each of the six windows. New vent openers were installed and the windows all open on their own on warm days.
Close-up of one of the windows in the open position.
Close-up of one of the windows. The metal flashing made all the difference with rain not getting in on stormy days.
Windows open on a warm day.
Part of the floor was brick until now. I reused the old bricks and added new ones to cover the whole floor. Note the dirty walls on the left. This is from when the roof leaked and rain splashed down on the dirt and splattered mud on the walls.
The new floor is finished. The walls have been cleaned up.
The rest of the wood making up the roof support is painted now. The next photos show views of the newly-painted rafters.
Newly painted roof rafters.
Newly painted roof rafters.
Another view of the roof rafters.
Another view of the roof rafters.
Another view of the roof rafters.
Everything complete... aside from some leaks in the vertical glass panes which will no doubt keep me busy for the rest of my life.
Greenhouse with new roof. Roof windows partially open.
More of the crazy rafters.
New twin wall polycarbonate roof with old rafters freshly painted.
More of the crazy rafters, different lighting than before.
More of the crazy rafters, different lighting than before.
Greenhouse roof replacement finished.
Inside the greenhouse with the lights on and cat looking out a lower window.
The Greenhouse Roof Repair Goddess. She keeps in our memories broken glass, old butyl tape and caulk, rusty screws, and rotting wood. Also twin wall polycarbonate, vent tape and U-profiles, metal flashing, and bricks.
In the fall of 2021, I partially copied what Michael McGee did in 2014 to repair one side of the greenhouse. Seven years after his repairs, the wood on the other side, too, had a lot of rot.
Between the two 4″x4″ corner posts on the long sides of the greenhouse, there are eleven vertical 2″x3″ supports that go from the ground to the roof. Six of these supports had bad rot and half of those six were no longer providing any support whatsoever to that wall.
There were also rotted boards that needed replacing in various locations around the sides of the greenhouse.
To start, we built a 2″x4″ structure to help support the roof while I was doing the work. Whether it was needed or not I don’t know since some of the supports along that wall were still ok….
The most complicated and worrisome part of this project was that the 16′ x 2″ x 6″ board that goes all the way across the length of the greenhouse just below the glass windows was especially rotted. That board was cut very specifically for my greenhouse and it was impossible for me to replace. So my goal was 1) to replace the parts of the vertical supports that were rotted, and 2) to repair the 16′ board from the inside as much as possible, then cover the mess with new wood.
A third goal was to keep water out of that wall in the future. I’m still working on that. 🙁
This is the wall before repair started in the fall of 2021. One of the vertical supports is completely rotted away below the bottom row of windows. Five of the other supports are in various degrees of rot.
Closer up. Note that where one of the 2"x3" supports is missing, the board above it is gone as well -- from rot. That horizontal board is actually part of the 2"x6" that goes all along the greenhouse and protrudes on the outside. The outside surface is nearly flat and does not drain water very well. I think water also seeped in through the window sills.
The temporary support structure.
The temporary support structure.
The temporary support structure.
I removed six of the cedar boards between the windows along the bottom wall. They had rot and needed replacing.
I used a lot of two part wood epoxy to fill in areas where wood had rotted.
The big problem with this area was that it was open to the outside -- the wood that was supposed to prevent that was gone from rot. Water seeping down the inside wall had done damage to the inside wall too. In some cases I replaced the wood, or if the damage wasn't too horrible I patched it.
More two part epoxy wood patch.
Rebuilding 2"x3" boards with two part epoxy wood patch.
Rebuilding 2"x3" boards with two part epoxy wood patch. It takes a few iterations to make corners.
I used to like working with clay when I was a kid.
Having six out of eleven of the vertical supports out, even with the 2"x4" frame to support the roof, made me nervous. I always had one or two other temporary supports rigged up at the same time. One day there was an earthquake and the greenhouse didn't even rattle.
New shiplap cedar siding.
This is the section where the 2"x6" that goes around the whole greenhouse was not so damaged. I added a new 2"x3" board under it and attached two new supports. The original supports, when the greenhouse was built, went from the ground to the roof in one piece. Now six of them on this side are in two pieces.
This section was more of a mess because the 2"x6" was more rotted.
A view of the two sections, one finished, one not.
Getting ready to put in the last four supports.
Looking again at the finished part...
The last four supports are in place, along with the triple row of what looks like 2"x3"s, but the middle layer is the 2"x6" and I had to carve out chunks of a 2"x3" to make it fit and look as if it was really the inside edge of the 2"x6".
All the rot of that 2"x6" is hidden now.....
The second set of cedar shiplap boards have been installed, replacing older rotting boards.
All repairs finished!
Wall repairs finished. Wall cleaned and painted.
Wide angle shot of whole interior. See the slipped glass pane in the upper right of the image? That got fixed in 2024.
Shiny, clean wall with no sign of wood rot. Six new cedar boards, six new 2"x3" supports, lots and lots of wood epoxy, and a triple layer of 2"x3"s that wasn't there before, under the windows.
This is the outside of the repaired wall. The ledge under the windows is the 16' long 2"x6" that had a tremendous amount of rot in places.
A relief to one's eyes after all the photos of the rot.
Must take photos while everything is so clean and the paint fresh.
I began prepping the roof rafters for painting, too, but didn't get around to painting them until 2024.
I replaced rotted wood in a few other places on the greenhouse at the same time I was doing the other work. Here's a board with rot at one end, near the door. I cut off the rotted end of the board and used the good end to replace rot in the wall on the other side of the greenhouse.
New board where rotted one was, near greenhouse door.
This corner has a huge and scary amount of rot. It is not just the siding, but also the 4"x4" vertical support. I replaced two of the side pieces and sealed the corner trim with new caulk but did not do much about that 4"x4"... at least not yet.
Rot!
I replaced this board.
Endless....
Looks as good as new now!
This angle too!
The corner trim reattached and recaulked.
This corner got recaulked as well.
These are replacements for the strips of wood that are above and below each pane on the greenhouse sides. I replaced ten that were on the south side and in poor condition. The two pieces on the left were the originals.
Another corner recaulked.
Everything put back together. Three years later the roof replacement began.
The pipevine swallowtails emerged from their chrysalises this spring. Can you see them?
The poppies, Ceanothus, and Fremontodendron are blooming again. Do you know what a wet and cold winter we had in California? The weeds are growing like crazy; I can’t keep up with them. The slugs decimated a third of my pea crop. Compared to people who suffered from flooding and other storm damage, I’m lucky to suffer only from weeds and slugs.
The cat tried to die last month. Five days of not eating or drinking, then twenty-four hours on IV fluids at the vet’s. Now she’s fine. She used one of her nine lives on the anniversary of your death, trying to steal the thunder. Oddly, the cat has become more affectionate during the last year. Now I wonder if not only a part of my dog Volpo (1999 – 2011) is inside her, following me around and watching me, but a part of you, too. A part of you that you tended not to express.
I see another hidden side of you now in your beautiful writing. Did you really think it would not interest me?
I’ve been trying to sort out your early life and place it in the context of history. While I documented bits and pieces over the decades, now I can dwell on it with no one to discourage me. I’m grateful for the trail of details you left, some that you shared with me and others that you didn’t. Attempting to fill gaping holes in my knowledge of eastern European history, I’ve been listening to history books while pulling weeds, replastering the kitchen ceiling, and painting exterior house trim – some of my favorite ways to multitask.
The windows in the image above I painted last summer, the fascia along the roof edge just this month. The spring annuals are tall now near the back of my house. You remember the tansy Phacelia (Phacelia tanacetifolia), right? Bees love it, and it can cause a skin rash on humans. Some of my other plants that flower only after dark and later in the summer I never got around to showing you.
In June last year I brought back with me books from your Ithaca cottage. I built new shelves for them and am comforted to see the books lining the wall when I’m reading or resting.
Do you know that I’m grateful to you for giving me a stable life when I was growing up? It may not have been the best choice for you. Or maybe, after all that happened when you were young, it was. I try to imagine what other paths your life might have taken.
Are you aware that the Russia-Ukraine war is still going on, in addition to fighting in Palestine and other parts of the world? Of course you would not be surprised. What went wrong in the evolution of Homo sapiens that a diagnostic character of the species is its ability to commit atrocious acts of mass violence towards each other, killing, displacing, and wreaking havoc for generations of families?
Your awareness of the propaganda, hypocrisy, and cruelty of politicians and the people who blindly follow them were never far from your thoughts even while you pursued activities you loved. Is this why I, too, feel the strongest sense of calmness when I’m outdoors? There is something reassuring that the sun rises each day and the plants, even the weeds, rise out of the soil each spring. This still happens now, whether or not you are here to see it. (So far.)
This post is about my mother, Grazyna, who died on March 25, 2022, in Ithaca, NY. My garden is 3,000 miles away from where she lived for the last 62 years and from where I grew up. She hasn’t visited in 20 years, except via Skype. Yet she is here. She is also in Europe, in Poland and Germany especially, places in many ways she never really left. She is also, I hope, in her own former yard in Ellis Hollow, Ithaca, tending to her plants and watching her dogs romp across the lawns.
The caterpillars in my yard remind me of her. I’m rearing pipevine swallowtail butterflies on my pipevine plants this year. She told me many times she hated caterpillars and thought they all should be squished. I told her that many caterpillars turn into beautiful butterflies. Did she hate the butterflies too? No, she said. But she definitely still hated the caterpillars.
Last year she found monarch caterpillars on her two milkweed plants in her Kendal yard. They ate almost all her milkweed leaves. The caterpillars got large. She enjoyed looking for them every day. I waited for her to tell me how she wanted to kill them – or had already killed them — but Grazyna was always full of contradictions. The caterpillars survived and finally wandered away from the plants to pupate. She looked for their chrysalises but couldn’t find any. She was disappointed not to know exactly where they went, and she worried about them. She looked at her neighbors’ milkweeds to see if they had the same leaf damage as her milkweeds. They didn’t. When she saw adult monarchs flying a few weeks after the caterpillars disappeared, she was sure they were the same ones that had been on her plants. She felt honored they’d chosen her milkweeds even though there were so many others nearby. [See footnote below.]
Grazyna hated cats. We did not have any when I was growing up – we had dogs, which she loved. Yet she always wanted to see my cat when we Skyped. And the cat would usually put in an appearance, contrary as my cat is and not always friendly. My cat has personality, Grazyna would say. She also said my cat is “nasty” – but with a smile, as if she understood perfectly. Grazyna was not one to pretend that she liked you if she didn’t. There were a lot of people she didn’t like, or at least never opened up to enough for them to see her kind side.
My yard has a memorial to my German shepherd Volpo: a punctured basketball and small plastic squeaky balls with painted-on smiley faces, his favorites that would light up his eyes. I got Volpo as a puppy from my mother in 1999 near the end of the many decades that she raised German shepherds. Over the course of her life in Ithaca, she whelped 25 litters, each puppy individually cared for and documented, put to the best of her ability into good and loving homes. Some of the people who got puppies from her became her lifelong friends. Grazyna would usually keep one dog from each litter with which she would do obedience training, agility, and tracking. I did the same training with Volpo. We talked all the time during those years about dog training. While I was in California and she was in Ithaca, she taught me over the phone to train Volpo to track – to follow the scent of a person a couple of hours after they had walked through a field or woods, finding objects the person dropped along the way. When I finally met some Bay Area people who tracked, they were astounded that Volpo and I knew how to track only from phone calls and the rest from having laid tracks for my mother when I was growing up.
I would usually try not to point the camera towards Volpo’s memorial in my yard on our Skype calls, because it was too sad for both of us. Volpo was my closest pal, handsome, noble, and kind. I still feel as if his soul is here at my house, perhaps inside the cat who showed up in my yard after Volpo died and who follows me around the way Volpo did. Grazyna greatly missed all her dogs, especially after the last one died in 2018 and she didn’t want to have any more, in preparation for her eventual death. The dogs had been a huge part of her life while I was growing up. I hope she’s once again with Zoonie, Yoshy, Wisla, Visnia, Uta, and all the dogs that preceded them, giving them her special baked liver treats and watching them race happily through the woods and over green Ithaca lawns. Preferably lawns and woods the way they were during the early part of our lives in Ellis Hollow: not yet infested with deer ticks carrying Lyme-disease causing bacteria.
As Grazyna got older, she gardened more. She doted on her plants in Ellis Hollow, knew the quirks and needs of each one. I’ve added gardening to my list of hobbies, too. I wish I could show my mother how my shelling peas are coming along, and how the yard is filled with flowers now because it’s the height of spring in California. Can she see my yellow lupines and orange poppies from where she is?
While digging the endless bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis) from the soil around my plants, before it wraps itself around everything and is much harder to extract, I wonder if my mother has read the latest issue of Harper’s magazine and is keeping up with events better than I am while pulling bindweed. If anyone can read after she is dead it would be her. Wherever she is now, has she been able to find news sources covering world events that she doesn’t consider propaganda and leave her seething mad?
I’ve been fortunate never (yet) to experience war. War and escaping from it defined her life. While growing up, I listened to phonograph records she played of Polish war songs, bombs going off in the background of the songs. Being happy was a sign of being an American – which unfortunately I was. It could be confusing for me.
Grazyna was born in Poland in 1931, her parents from Catholic families. Her father became a judge after his family was chased off their Moldova estate during the Russian Revolution. During Grazyna’s first eight years she lived in various towns where her father worked or went to school: Sarny (in Poland then; now in Ukraine); Wołożyn and Oszmiana (both in Poland then; now in Belarus), and Vilnius (in Poland then; now in Lithuania). She ended up back in Vilnius right before the start of World War II. Her one sibling, brother Henryk, died before the war began from scarlet fever after coming down with strep throat. To escape the Russian front, Grazyna and her parents fled to Warsaw. Soon after, they fled to Krakow, where my mother spent most of the wartime years. Her father joined the Polish Resistance and eventually was captured by the Nazis. He died in Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belson in January 1945.
As the Russian soldiers spread west, Grazyna and her mother continued to flee, first briefly to Prague then to Germany at the end of the war. They lived in a refugee camp in Regensburg for two months, then in the nearby town of Fürth im Wald for the remaining time of Grazyna’s stay in Europe. She attended German high school in Cham and learned German, along with catching up with all the years of school she had missed during the war. She was pulled out of high school in April, 1949, just before graduating, when her mother decided to emigrate to the United States. They ended up in Bismarck, North Dakota, where, Grazyna always pointed out, the state tree is a telephone pole and there were no bookstores. Despite the disruptions to her schooling and having to learn yet another language (English), Grazyna earned a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Chicago.
My garden is testament that not all of America is like Bismarck, North Dakota. For one thing, it has trees. My neighborhood is culturally and ethnically diverse. Yet as I carefully unwrap the bindweed vines from the peas and the monkeyflowers, I know my piece of America is very different from where she grew up, the places whose histories span not only centuries of great art and important scientific discoveries but also terrible wars that shifted country borders and displaced or killed millions of people. I like to think that she is back in all the places she loved, with the people and places she lost at too young an age. And her dogs are with her and no bombs are falling.
My mother would hate that I’ve written about her, but as she has said many times, she doesn’t give a shit what happens after she dies. I miss her.
Footnote: Ironically, there’s a huge population explosion this year in the Ithaca area of gypsy moths (Lymantria dispar dispar). These are non-native moths whose caterpillars (immature stage) can be very destructive, defoliating many kinds of trees. After a couple of trips to the woods I wanted to kill them all. Sometimes my mother was right. The trick is knowing which caterpillars are to blame.
The greenhouse in my backyard was built by architect Michael Cobb, who grew up on the property behind mine. Read Michael’s blog for a history of the building of the greenhouse.
In the summer of 2014, Michael McGee agreed to tackle repairs on my greenhouse. The supports along one side of the structure were rotting, along with many of the boards to which the supports were attached. Michael did an amazing job.
After Michael’s repairs, I wanted to paint the entire greenhouse. Not only did the new wood need painting, but much of the paint on the old wood was gone or peeling. There had been a partial repainting many years ago, but that paint was not in great shape either.
The greenhouse has 200 windows. The prepping took more time than the painting. This was a big, slow job. One layer of primer + two layers of paint = 600 windows to paint.
The greenhouse was built by architect Michael Cobb for the previous owner of my house. Michael grew up on the property behind mine. Read Michael’s blog for a history of the building of the greenhouse.