Sunshine Dreams

Yesterday, we went to town and picked up my new washer. It looks great sitting in the back of the truck ;-) Owning one himself, the young man that brought it out for us was full of helpful information. However, he did not know how much it weighed. The other young man that operated the machine that picked it up and placed it neatly in the back of our truck did know how much it weighed, 325 pounds. Uh-huh! Now Pa is really quite strong, and I'm pretty good at helping out, but 325 pounds is just a wee bit beyond our limit!

Once home,Pa covered the washer, already wrapped in plastic with a tarp and there she sits, in the back of our truck. I'm sure the kitties had a grand time checking it out last night as we slept. Today, Pa will be giving U-Haul a call, and hopefully following up with yet another trip to town today, to rent a hand truck and perhaps a couple ramps, so we can wrangle my new washer down, out of the truck and into the house. Should prove to be entertaining.

After our trip to town yesterday , Nathan seemed to be in a bit of a funk. He said something about his plans for the day not being realized, but other than that wasn't willing to share. We allowed him some personal space for a bit, then I went out and shared with him some ideas for his greenhouse. He perked right up. We found an outside thermometer we could do without, and he placed that inside his greenhouse so he could track the temps. Today, we will be fashioning some solar collectors for the shelves, and check the temps some more, to see how that may change things, especially at night (evening and morning temp checks)

Once the thermometer was in place, Nathan busied himself preparing a yogurt cup as a small planter, filled it with soil from his new bag of organic potting soil, planted a few romaine seeds and placed it inside, on the top shelf of his greenhouse. The experiment begins. We're all excited to see how it goes.

The morning fog has lifted and it looks like it may be another sunny one today. I'm hoping the warmer sunny weather will hold through next week so we can finally get to work on our Power House science project! After the initial excitement, and eagerness to proceed , the lack of sunny days, along with the overly abundant wind gusts this summer resulted in a bit of a let down for us. We needed to be able to depend on the sun for the beginning experiments, and our solar friend just wasn't cooperating! We made do with some other lessons, but are keeping our fingers crossed that we'll be able to proceed this next week. In a way it's kinda neat, in that Nathan's greenhouse fits in so well with the Power House lessons.

The odd weather did provide us with a lesson of it's own. Perhaps solar alone wouldn't serve us well here. Perhaps, as with those on Dragon Island, we would need to depend on the wind as well. Of course the idea of going completely off grid is little more than a fun fantasy for us, though it's not complete madness to consider at least cutting back on our dependence on the Power Company at some point, perhaps just a wee bit at a time. It all adds up, and would make for some great science and life lessons for the kids.

I'm pleased to note I managed to wake a bit early this morning, which provides me with more time to accomplish all I have planned for the day. With the sun smiling down on us, and so many grand plans, today just can't help but be a memorable one!