To The Surbiton Manor Born

There is a drawback to solar panels that the folks selling them to you won't exactly go out of their way to mention. They collect snow, and become useless if you don't shovel them off. They cover an area of our roof pretty much exactly the same size as our driveway. With the driveway, you can walk a shovel if it isn't too deep, or fire up the electric snow blower and clear it off pretty quickly. You wouldn't put a toothbrush on the end of a 30' poll and try to do it from the garage door. Yet, this is pretty much the process for clearing off solar panels. Everything is done above your head. It's a good arm workout, but other than that, it isn't a lot of fun.  There has to be a better way to do this. I have this idea that we could somehow fasten our electric leaf-blower to the poll to get rid of dustings, but I worry that it is too heavy at 5 lbs. Worth a shot, though. More than a dusting, and I'm afraid we're stuck with the current method. It's no

Snow has begun falling in Steepmeadow-land. No accumulation, as yet. Just a few flakes sifting down from the interminably grey skies. Closed down the strawberry bed yesterday, covered it with eponymous straw.  Garden news will likely slow down as attention turns inward. I've put a lot of thought into calculating whether or not our 2 cords of firewood will last the winter. I think they will, but I'd be more comfortable if we had 3. The last few days have been cold, and the fireplace has been burning continuously since last Thursday. Balancing the heat, figuring out how to fine-tune the damper to heat the upstairs comfortably, these have been the activities. I'm curious to see what our energy bills look like. The electric space heaters have been backing up the wood, and the honest truth is that the solar has been pretty useless with the endless grey skies of November.  The color pallet outside is monochrome brownish & grey.