Warm Rain, Hot Coffee

After a week of overnight temperatures in the 30's the so-called "pineapple express" has brought some warmer wet weather to Pasadena. Overnight temperature was about 50 degrees, and the backyard rain gauges agree: As of 5:30 AM PST we've had 3.5 inches out of this storm.

It has been raining heavily and steadily all night, with only the occasional lull; the water was loud enough that it woke me at 2:00 am or so, but has not "dumped" loudly since. A good soaking, all in all, without too much rain for the hillsides.

One day, I would really love to have a weather station hooked up to the ol' PC. I always track mud in when I read the rain gauge.

Cold Air, Rain, Broken Clouds and Solar Peak!

The cold air and rain of this weekend, and the broken clouds today, created ideal conditions for the solar cells -- and we peaked out at 2510 watts, riding at peak most of the day. Of course, our system is only rated at 2403 watts, and the inverter at 2500 watts, so we can't do much better than that!

When we had a gravity feed heater, and no air conditioning, we used a little less electricity than we do now. Last year when we installed the solar cells we were looking at doing 100% of our electric usage, with little or no compromise in terms of lifestyle. (We are a family of 5 in a somewhat drafty 1903-built house.)

With the new baby last June we installed central air and a new forced air furnace. We still don't use it much. In winter, we keep the house at a comfortable 65 at night, 67 tops during the day (although the south facing windows keep the house at 70-74 most winter days when it is not super cold outside) and around 78-80 for the AC setting in summer).

April 7, 2006 is our one year Net-Metering Anniversary, and will be getting our first electric bill in a year. (Well actually, we have had some tribulations with the billing, but we haven't had to pay one yet.) On that date we will close out our one year contract and see how much we owe for the past year.

Right now, with our peak production yet to come, we owe about $50 for the whole year. At the moment, even if we peak out every day from now until April 7, we will not likely hit 100% of our usage. But we may yet come pretty close.

Actually, if I used the older microwave a lot less, and used the electric coffee maker a whole lot less, we'd probably get even closer. And we haven't run around pulling phantom loads offline, or even always turning off the computer printer, or dealing with insulation and leakage at unsealed doors.

As BP says, "energy doesn't grow on trees -- it falls from the sky!"

Glass Handgrenade with the Pin Pulled

Three bottles of cider exploded in the basement sometime in the last two weeks. Didn't hear 'em, but had a bad feeling about 'em.

The Oak Glen Cider was pretty sweet, and we goosed it as it went down to assure a fizzy end result. The last two bottles we opened ever so carefully shot 4 feet in the air, and all but about 250 ml was lost!

It was good stuff though; and oh what a wallop!

Still, especially with the recent spate of warm weather, I should have been expecting the problem and opened and re-bottled all of them.

When I went down to the basement to put away some empties, I noticed we only had one bottle standing.

Yikes!

Since that one bottle was essentially a glass grenade with the pin pulled, I lifted the remaining bottle out of the shards and carried it, ever so slowly, in gloved hands, wearing eye protection, out into the backyard. I set it carefully on the table, and gingerly popped the cap. As I am getting better at catching air borne cider, I got nearly 300 ml of the 600 or so in the bottle.

It made a lovely meter-tall spout of out of the bottle, though.

Meanwhile, the TJ cider is cloudy, skunky, and low on alcohol too; nice fizz though. So we will give all that cider another six weeks or more before we open another tester.

'Course, this happened last time, now that I think of it. The bottling was so undrinkable at the early test that we got discouraged and let it age another two or three months -- at which point it had clarified and was quiet yummy. Stand by on this one!

Moonlight

The full moon came up tonight through the branches of the oak tree down the street, with just a swirl of white clouds brightly lit by the lunar glow. The night is cool, though the day was warm, and using the laptop on the WiFi under our own Moontree is a real delight.

We have spent many long days cleaning up for summer; chopping down the overgrown vines and weeds behind the garage, mowing, trimming, and pruning everything; losing a couple of plants we've been meaning to ditch for some time.

The winter salad garden has started to grow, finally, but something is eating the shoots off to the dirt pretty darn quickly, so I have little hope. Weirdly, some of the heirloom squash we planted and at least a few of the watermelon seeds have germinated -- although none of them came up at all over the spring and summer after we planted them last year! Go figure.

Broccoli is doing well, and I have had more than a few meals of organic home grown broccoli, especially yummy on the organic linguine noodles from Trader Joe's sprinkled with the sheep's milk TJ brand "powdered cheese" in a green can.

This being my first crop of broccoli, I have learned that the heads come out a little smaller under less than ideal conditions (like my random watering) and how to tell when a stem is ready to cut, and why it is poor eating when cut too late. Next batch will do better. I will also discover an organic antidote for the lovely cabbage worms/moths.

Oh, the kids love the little white "butterfly" that visits us. Any time they see one they pretend that it is the same one and say hello to "Cabbage." Yes, they named a moth Cabbage. (I think Spencer may have started that one; Kathryn likes to name the worms in the worm bin. )

But when I find as many little cabbage worms doing battle for my broccoli as there was broccoli on the last batch, a solution must be found!

[Update: Soaking the heads in salt water dropped three broccoli green 'pillars off of my dinner; alas the steam of cooking killed two more I missed! At least steamed caterpillar is gray so it is hard to miss in the pot. Makes me wonder though what I did miss on the broccoli I had raw on my salad yesterday!]

The winter garlic and onions never made it, although that could be due to my habit of pulling green garlic to use the chopped stems and subtle fresh baby garlic in salads and the like. (Grin). Similar fate for the shallots.

The red potatoes have been going great guns. One plant began to die off, and so I pulled it, and have five "shooter" marble sized new potatoes fresh from the ground. Meant to have them for dinner yesterday, will tonight.

Mandarin Orange crop is in full; the family love to grab a "cold one" off the tree in the morning on the way to school and work. Weirdly, they are also good and kind of fun to eat picked hot in the full afternoon sun.

Recently, I found that I could print a label on brown paper bags, and so have been giving away little collections of "Moontree Organic Mandarin Oranges" and lemons too. Kinda fun.

Now I wrote "Organic" on the bag because they are; we follow the organic farming guidelines. Or rather we use fewer even "natural" chemical inputs than the guidelines allow, and under USDA rules, we could actually sell these with this label. (We "make" less than $5,000 from sales of organic produce, so may use the label if we comply. One can only use the "USDA Certified Organic" if one has been certified.)

Wonder how the City of Pasadena would feel about the kids setting up an Organic Fruit Stand each February?