Bogieblog

Weather and Flora

The weather over the last month has been wacky and affected a lot of the outdoor plants. First we had a freeze (not a frost) the middle of May or so. The Japanese Maple got bit hard as did some other pants. The Rose of Sharons and Burgundy Bell maple were just getting leaf buds, which were totally destroyed (they are starting to leaf out again though). Japanese maple then Burgundy Belle pictures taken 5/22/23.

Then, last week we went from being in the 60's to two days in the 90's, which caused stress to hostas, lupines and other pants. Doesn't help we didn't get any measurable precipitation for nearly 3 weeks.

We got wild storms Friday night where 5 buildings and a person were hit by lightning in the general vicinity (2 of those happening in the adjacent town of Antrim) and there was also a brush fire started by lightning. Unfortunately, we only saw about 1/8" of rain out of it. (following is from SWNH FB page)

But, I took pictures of flowers that were not affected by the freeze on Friday afternoon just before the storms hit. First are the Rhodies at their peak. The purple ones out fron are again stunning. I manipulated the red rhodie pic to more accurately show the color as phones/cameras want to make them pinker than they truly are.

Although most lupine plants were badly wilted from the lack of rain, this one managed to bloom. And, with cooler temps and the little rain we did get, the other lupine plants were looking better onsaturday.

Columbine

Variegated Weigala (I cannot get the pink to stand out as it does when personally viewing

I have been impressed by  "Fruit Punch pinks" in the south side garden. I bought and planted them in early May and they have been blooming non-stop - even shrugging off the freeze and the fact that I haven't watered them since planting.

Yesterday the high was 61 - at 12:01 am. The daytime temp was 51-53 and heavily overcast so no solar heat gain. The main floor pellet stove ran once yesterday afternoon and is running right now (5:30 am). It will be cool and heavily overcast for another couple of days, so it will most likely run  a few more times before it is time to put it to rest for the season.

The baptisia is just starting to flower so should come into its own in a week or so .I also saw a miniature root beer iris bloom yesterday, but failed to get a picture.

So despite the wild swings in weather, it seems that I am having a fairly good year for color in the gardens.

May 2023 Solar Report

May was a good month for solar production. My arrays produced over 1 megawatt, most of which was pushed back to the grid for my neighbors to use. That was despite having several "dark" days from heavy overcast. But with the higher sun angle, there is only 1 day that I used more than I produced (actually when I look at the report, I produced 11.8 and used 11.8, so it's a wash).

The west side continues to "shine" (pun intended). Each of its panels produced more energy than any of the panels on the east or south sides. The west side produced a total of 439 kwh, the east side produced 380 kwh and the south side produced 347 kwh (the south side having one less panel than either of the other two sides).

And of course the results of that were I owe the power company $0, plus received a $210 credit.

So adding in the smaller credits from the previous 2 months, I have a total of $366 credit to draw against next winter.

Next month's usage will surely go up quite a bit. With temps in the 90s the last two days, I turned on the mini split (afternoons and evenings) and window fans (early mornings) to keep the house at a reasonable temperature. However, today thru Tuesday, temps are supposed to be a lot lower - I may even have to run the pellet stove occasionally. It's all up to mother nature, so we'll see.

Time for a New Phone

I was visiting the family in Kansas Tuesday thru Saturday. During the entire time I was out of NH I didn't have cell phone service or text (even at airports). I could connect to wifi and use any apps I wanted, but the main function of the phone was a no-go. I have US Cellular, and it has never failed me because they have agreements with Verizon (which has massive coverage in KS). I did some research and everyplace was telling me I would have to remove then reinstall the SIM card, reset the network (loosing a lot of presets), or do a factory reset. But, it was clear that they were talking about no cell service from anyone (including your own carrier). I messed around with the settings, rebooting etc but I didn't want to do anything drastic. Finally found a site that said old software may be to blame.

My phone is old enough that it hasn't updated for 1 or 1.5 years so I thought that may be the problem. I found a US cellular site in KS about 30 miles from where I was staying so Cop Car and I went on a field trip to see if I had inadvertently changed something since my last trip. About 10 miles away my phone suddenly started pinging with texts coming in. I looked and sure enough I had cell service. Decided that they probably couldn't figure out anything if had cell service so decided to turn around and not bother. Besides, I had been thinking of getting a new phone and that gave me the excuse I needed to spend money on one.

Yesterday afternoon it was in the 90s so decided it was a great time to go to my favorite US Cellular location. Told the guy my woes and he looked up where I had been and figured I was correct. At the very least, since My old S9+ didn't have 5G, that might have been the issue too (some networks have dropped support for the older tech). I had done my research and wanted a phone that could take my SD card for all my picture taking, and the flagship Samsungs don't. But, there is a nice mid-range phone that does, and has decent performance at less than 1/2 the price of the more popular models.

After all was said and done, I walked out with an A54 and a contract that included insurance and unlimited data that was only $2 more than what I'd been paying. My old plan (not a contract) had limited data although I could go over and they would automatically charge for the next higher amount.

Most things were synced at the store or on my way home, but of course I had to set up a few things last night. I kept my old phone as a backup and it still retained its wifi connecting abilities, so that is cool as I can use the old phone for web surfing while outside in the sitting area (or when the new phone is charging)

Sunbathing

Wednesday, I caught Rainey and Spot sunbathing in/next to the living room window. It was cool and windy, but they were nice and warm.

I moved a lot of plants out to the back porch, so Spot is enjoying getting to stretch out. I had also dropped the curtain panel on the big window pane to let in the solar gain and the cats like to lay on the extra padding it provides.

That night I had to bring in most of the plants as we had a frost warning (got down to 28*). I finally got to put them back out late yesterday morning as our temps should be fine from here forward

The creeping phlox are finally in full bloom. If you remember, last week only the bright pink phlox were blooming (they get more sun). I was happy the bright pinks lasted log enough to get a picture of all together.

An 8-10' branch from the neighbor's lilac came down over the winter. Weirdly it still leafed out and bloomed anyway. While cleaning up his yard last weekend,  I took a couple of snips from it before tossing the rest into his brush pile (the vase is 10" tall for scale). Yes, they smelled as good as they looked. 

Both the blooms and leaves stayed fresh a good long time too. Most of the week they took massive amounts of water so I filled the vase several times a day. I emptied the vase yesterday evening. I could have kept them another day or two as the leaves were only half wilted, but decided to stick the branches into the ground by the shed and see if they do anything. Probably not, but you don't know unless you try.

Flowers from Week of 5/07/2023

Finally getting more than daffs, wild violets and dandelions in bloom. First are the tiny flowers: flowering almond, bleeding heart and forget-me-not

Finding this bleeding heart made a liar out of me on a forum I frequent. I had stated that the bleeding heart I planted in the shade garden many years ago did not survive. All I can say is when they took out the swamp next door, it opened the area to more sunshine, and maybe that is what this little 6-7" plant needed to come out of dormancy.

I did enhance this picture (which I rarely do) by darkening it a bit since the sunshine washed out the colors.

The hot pink phlox always busts out before the ones above it because it gets more sun

The crabapple doesn't always put on a good show, but it is this year. The first pic is from my back porch and the second pic is from my front yard.

And as an aside - it is so irritating that I have to input pictures several times before they take. They either just show a picture symbol, tell me no pictures are selected (which is obviously not true when they are highlighted right there in the choose window), or don't bother showing at all. So I have to delete the code and try again. And if I try to do more than 2 at a time, forget it. Just the 2 crabapple pics took 3 tries - argh!

April 2023 Solar Production Report

Despite 6 days of very little production (2.9 - 10.1 kwh produced), I still logged in a respectable 774 kwh produced in April.

I use anywhere from 6.5 to 10 kwh per day; most of the difference is use of the clothes drier. The west side produced more per panel than either of the other sides (except for 1 panel on the south side).

I do enjoy that with the 3 sides of panels, I start producing some energy about 7 am and it goes thru about 7 pm (as of yesterday). I've seen some houses with panels only on the south side, or east side and wonder how much of the day they get production. Of course the circumstances of the house orientation and roof style impact the configuration.

With the trees starting to leaf out, although at this point they are barely leaflets, it will be interesting to see what the effect is on the east and south sides in the coming months. I don't expect them to reduce production (because the sun angle will be higher). But will production increase on those side? And if so by how much, percentage wise, as compared to the west side increase?

And, as an aside, I added a "Solar" Category for posts. I believe I have updated all previous entries starting from my investigations into solar thru the install and activation, including the tree work and chimney work I had done, and of course my reports on solar production. Hopefully I caught them all because apparently searching for the word "solar" doesn't actually bring up every post that mentions solar, or even has solar in the title.

At Least Read / Watch What you Link To

I find it so funny that people, at times, post a link to an article or video that they are trying to prove a point (I assume), which does nothing of the sort. Maybe the titles seem like they should, or the first paragraph, but you can tell they didn't watch/read the whole thing. Or perhaps they ignored anything further and hope their audience does too (or doesn't get that far.

I've seen that happen on forums, on blogs, and in FB.

The latest case is the Weekend Pundit (who I like, link to and have no beef with) has this on his 4/30/2023 post:

That link goes to this You Tube video.  One would assume it is evidence of some sort that there has been extreme climate change for at least 800 years. It is indeed named 800 years of Climate Crisis but the entire 5+ minutes of video is of hiking their dogs in several different areas.

Unless for some reason the video under that title has been changed, I can only assume that the WP, for whatever reason, did not watch it it and just made an assumption based on the title.

I don't mean to pick on WP - I see this type of thing on a regular basis by all sides of every issue that I care to try to educate myself in. i just happened to come across this at a time I was in the mood, and position to, enter a post on this blog.

 

X1 First Impressions

Last weekend I mentioned that the cable company was forcing me to change cable boxes as the one I got in 2013 would no longer be supported. It was delivered Wednesday afternoon and that night I decided to go ahead and set it up.

First things first, it was easy to swap out my old box to the new. I chose to use the enclosed cable instead of the old one because the old one wasn't long enough so I had to also use an extension with it. The cable is long enough, so that is less interference that could potentially happen. Although they also included a new connector to the TV, I used my existing one (fortunately my TV was equipped appropriately).

After watching online video on how to get the cable box to talk to my cable account, that went fairly seamlessly. And wonder of wonders - it automatically figured out my TV code and the remote both turns the TV on and off (as well as volume control).  So, it works my TV better than the old remote. 

I do have a few gripes however:

• The clock on the new box is too small for me to read from the couch (<10' away). Not the biggest deal, but irritating.
• The remote is smaller (black on in the picture), with smaller buttons, and the configuration of those buttons is different. Again, an irritant but after 10 years of being familiar with a configuration and being able to use the functions without looking, muscle memory is not my friend.
• The on/off button is so small and inconspicuous, it is hard to find (button at very top, right corner - you'll probably miss it unless you click on the picture to enlarge it). The old remote (silver) had a very conspicuous button (the red button toward the top, above the black button).
• I have no idea how to mute since there is no button for that (probably a voice command)

• Voice commands - not sure why that is a big deal. You still have to hold the remote and press a button. Oh, and without a list of those commands, not to mention actually remembering said list, that function is not very useful (yes, I could probably find it by googling, but I don't care about using it anyway). And as mentioned earlier, muting is probably by voice, but since I have to pick up the remote and push a button anyway, why not just have a mute button?
• They sent me a used box, which is fine and not the gripe. My gripe is that the box was not wiped from previous settings. How do I know? Because while setting up the recordings for a couple of shows, I had to delete about 10 current recordings, and  the same amount of future recordings that were set up.

Positives:

• As mentioned earlier, the remote will control all my TV functions (the ones I use anyway), so I was able to put the TV remote away. Now I just have two remotes - one for the cable box / TV, and one for the soundbar.
• I could have had my soundbar controlled thru the cable box remote, but I don't use the soundbar often, so I didn't want to do so.
• Speaking of soundbar, I was able to hook it into the cable box. So it is no longer hooked thru the TV which reduced one complication.
• The cable box is a lot quieter than the old one.

Both positive and negative: Whenever the remote is touched the buttons light up

• Helps with seeing the buttons and what they represent
• There are a lot of times I (or a cat) touch the remote without actually wanting to do anything with it.
• The power button does not have a light. Yeah, that teeny tiny button is not easy to find in any situation.

Everything else is just getting used to how it works. Getting to my recordings is different - not good or bad, just different.

For Those Who Wonder

Cop Car asked if the youngsters voluntarily go into the cat pen. Yes, all the time. I happened to notice Rainey in it yesterday. If you look at the very bottom of the picture, just right of center, you can see the bottom door is open (as it is all the time unless I have a reason to contain them).

They do not view being in the pen as punishment at all. This was not done by training per se, I used the pen to keep them corralled when I first got them as kittens. It kept them safe from Rita (just in case) and hazards within the house while I was at work. They spent 12+ hours a day in there (obviously with a cat box, food and water). When they were small, it was plenty big enough for them.

Once they "graduated" to having access to the entire house all the time, I still left the bottom door open so they could enter and exit freely. Some days they don't use the interior at all, other days one or both of them are in it for a good long nap (or to grab toys).

Youngster Shenanigans

Had to go into the office a couple of weeks ago for computer issues. When I got back home, Rainey was in the bedroom window

Then last Monday the kitchen faucet suddenly developed a leak under the cabinet so I called a plumber to take care of it (after turning off the water lines). It turned out to be a simple fix that I could have done myself if it had happened over the weekend, but I was working so didn't have time to investigate and fiddle with it. While the plumber was here, I had the two youngsters in the cat pen. I'm unsure what Rainey was trying to accomplish on the floor of the pen. Maybe she was trying to hide, or maybe she was trying to use it as a blanket (she loves to sleep under blankets).