Bogieblog

Frozen Rose

I've had 8-10 frosts since the beginning of the month. Until this past week, most of them were light. But starting on Wednesday, we were having hard frosts every morning. Thursday morning, I happened to think to take pictures of the Frida Kahloe rose and buds with frost on

Yesterday afternoon I checked on the rose and the flower is still good and smells great. I will be interested to see if the buds open with the warmer weather this weekend.

Well, I would give you those pictures but Typepad won't display them after upload. Maybe it will cooperate if I update later

UPDATE: Here are the pics - well, just click on that link above the picture of the buds and you'll get to see the flower picture. That seems to be the best that Typepad can do for me.

Solar Install Complete - Now More Waiting

Yesterday the installers showed up to finish the project. Yes, they were hoping for early in the week (Monday or Tuesday), but despite the forecast, it started misting early Monday morning and continued thru Tuesday night. Precipitation for over 36 hours and I received about 1/16" - but the roof was always wet and dripping.

South side - can't get a better pic since all the land on that side is lower than the house

East side - stood on a stump of one of the trees cut back there

West side

It could be a month or more before it is generating power. 1st step is for the town inspector to come out and look it over. Oh, and the electrician has to be here too, so their schedules have to match.

Once the inspector signs off, they send in paperwork to the electric company for them to come out and change out the meter. The power company has 20 working days (4 weeks) to do that. The install company said usually it is within 2 weeks. But, with my luck, it will be longer than the 4 weeks because they will lose my paperwork or something.

So yeah, could very well be Thanksgiving before the switch get turned on.

Starting the Solar Project

UPDATE: New picture of west side rail system is at the bottom of the post.

Wednesday the solar company called and said that they thought a big commercial job may be completed early so they might be able to come over Friday to do the install - would that work for me? It happened to coincide with my Friday off, so I said sure. The rep said she would call me late Thursday afternoon if they would be able to make it the next day. And as my luck usually runs, the weather guessers started predicting high winds and heavy rains starting Thursday night and until noon or so on Friday. The rep did not call my Thursday evening, which is what I fully expected because of the weather.

Well, the winds never materialized for my area, although we did get a fair amount of rain. I was pleasantly surprised on Friday morning when the rep called and said they would be over in a while if it still worked for me. Cool! When I mentioned the high winds that never materialized, she expressed how if the weather turned they would either hunker down for a while, or quit and come back on Tuesday (scheduled day of install).

The crew arrived and started the work. The electrician also arrived and started his part at the panel. Note to electrician, when a circuit breaker is off, you don't just randomly turn it on, being "helpful" without checking with the homeowner. Fortunately it didn't cause any problems, but I had the circuit breaker to the old air handler off for a reason. At least he did check with me later (after he had flipped it on)

I happened to go out and check the progress about 11, and noticed that the east side rail work was not as I had requested. The work order was supposed to tell them to place all the panels as high as possible in order to maximize the sun exposure since that is the shady side of the house. Instead, they had set the rails to make it look "pretty", in a triangular pattern, so most of the panels would have been on the lower part of the roof. I don't care about pretty, I care about efficiency. Fortunately I caught them and it was fairly easy for them to move. The great thing about standing seam roofs, in this application, is that they solar installers don't have to drill holes in the roof, instead they use clamps.

The bad thing about standing seam roofs is they are slick when wet (which is why they dump snow so readily). The crew decided that they didn't want to risk dropping the panels because of the footing, so quit about lunch time. They had not quite finished reinstalling all the rails on the east side, but  they made good progress.

South side - this side will be pretty much maxed out at 6 panels and obviously they still have a minor amount of work to finish up the rails.

East side - still awaiting more rails after they had to take the original configuration down. Not complete yet and will hold 7 panels, some of which will go in front of the chimney

West side (not great pic - I'll get a better one later). This side was made "pretty" and will hold 7 panels.

So a partial crew should be here Tuesday to finish up. Of course, the forecast has changed from possibility of rain, to definitely getting rain, so we'll see.

ADDED 10/16/22: Here is a somewhat better picture of the west side railing system. Looks like they are going to do a 1-2-4 pattern (top to bottom with 7 panels)

New Cat Tree

The old cat tree was looking really sad and beat up. Understandable since I got it from the side of the road (obviously well used) back in 2014. I replaced the sisal but otherwise the rest was original. It has seen use from 5 cats (Tory and Fuzzy and now Rita, Spot and Rainey). I've been looking for a new cat tree for the last couple of months. I wanted a larger one, but didn't like the prices for those that seemed solid and not cheaply made. A couple of weeks ago Am*zon had some cat trees on sale, plus I had a lot of cash back from my cc to use, and finally decided to buy.

It arrived on Monday and after I logged off of work for the day I tackled the job. The box of parts was packed to the max. It was hard to believe that a cat tree that reaches my eye level was all in there.

This was both funny and frustrating. Every single part was labeled very well and basically in the order of use. The bag of hardware, on the other hand, was just a jumble of parts that I had to separate out and keep track of which screw was which.

Spt (in the cube) and Rainey checking it out right after the above picture was taken.

Rita being casual about checking it out a bit later. If you look really close, on the left, you can see Spot is still in the cube and eyeballing Rita.

Rita in the lower cave a couple of days later.

I will be stripping down the old cat tree and recovering it. I've already started but will put that in another post when I get it done.

Burgundy Belle Maple and Other Autumn Showings

Last year the Burgundy Belle maple at the corner of the house did not have a good showing. The weather had been challenging, so I couldn't blame it. This year, despite drought, and my not watering, she is looking gorgeous.

This first picture was taken on thursday when I got home from the evening dump run. The sun was close to setting and really made the leaves fiery. Plus it lit up the junk maples in the background in such a way for them to make a pretty backdrop (they normally go from green to yellow to brown in about 2 hours).

While out there I noticed that the tree next to the shed had shed enough leaves to see what I beleive to be a bald faced hornet nest (also called white faced hornet). The nest is in disrepair - I'm guessing the robins that nest in that tree might have taken exception. Or, the catbirds that tore a bald faced hornet nest over my front door a couple of years ago took care of this one (athough the catbirds did a much more thorough job a couple of years ago than this one seems to be)..

 

Pictures of individual Burgundy Belle leaves were taken yesterday

Also yesterday, I noticed the turtle heads that had been covered by the sweet autumn clematis finally got into the clear and are blooming. Other flowers are also blooming in that garden.

And hey, not blooms, but added color in the yard - I covered the shed pad with a tarp last Sunday to keep most of the leaves off

Also last Sunday I reinstalled the fence that I had removed for the tree work.

Reinstalling the fence posts was a chore. Those are 8' long and 2' goes into the ground. I was on a 6' ladder trying to sledge hammer those suckers. Since the ground is uneven, I was only confident to be on the step that is about 4' from the ground, so a lot of the work of sledging was above my shoulder height. I was sore for a couple of days, but obviously got it done.

Some Fall Foliage Late September 2022

The tree at the north side of the house is really looking nice. Last weekend I mowed leaves (for the most part instead of grass), and I'll have to do so again this weekend.

The variegated weigala has started changing. I can't believe I noticed it as I was passing by to check the mail. I took an isolated picture in case you can't find it in the original.

Yesterday (an off Friday), I traveled to the western part of the state to visit with friends that were up from NH,  visiting their property. Shortly before I got to Keene, NH, I saw an incredibly beautiful yellow grove of trees. The yellow was accentuated by the sun being behind them, making them almost glow. Unfortunately, traveling at 70 mph with a whole line of traffic behind me, and approaching a curve, I could not safely get slowed and stopped to get that picture. I was able to stop a distance on the other side of the curve, walk back a couple hundred feet, and take pics from the other side of the trees. The sun is behind me, instead of behind the trees, so the pictures don't get the glow effect, but still beautiful.

The first two pics are on the opposite side of the road from me and the last pic is on the same side of the road.

 

Solar Update Part II September 2022

In my last update earlier this month, I had indicated that the solar array install would be on the 7th of October (they had pulled in the date - after it had been pushed to 10/18). Well, this past Monday they called and pushed it back out to 10/18/22. Apparently the storms of the previous week had put them behind schedule.

So now, instead of realistically expecting energy production to start by the middle of November, I'm thinking I would be lucky if it will start by Thanksgiving.

As my boss replied when I let her know of the change (again) to my PTO day: BOOOOO!