Fenris Devours the Sun
As we near the winter solstice, the bitter winter has locked things down. It snowed almost all of last week. Kiki even got a snow day from the teaching job. Temperatures are expected to plunge into the sub-zeros for the coming week. But it doesn't mean that we stop the planning and the plotting.
This isn't great for the solar panels, which are struggling as it is because of the lack of sunlight. Snow disables them. You wouldn't necessarily know it from looking at the useless Enphase "Enlighten" software which stops reporting at the slightest indication of a chill. With or without the reporting, it's worth the effort to clear the snow off of the things. I believe I've mentioned before the kind of upper body workout that this entails. Absolutely everything happens over your head and the business end of the roof rake thingy is tiny and very, very far away at the end of a pole. Chin up and all that sort of thing, though.
I just came in from chopping a bunch of kindling for the coming week. I figure best to do it now when it's 7 degrees Fahrenheit and still than -12 with a -40 windchill. It becomes clear that we haven't got nearly enough wood to last past March. I marked off a face cord last weekend, and I'd say, conservatively, that we've gone through 1/4 of it. We have about 3.75 face cords left, of the 8 we started off with. If one face cord lasts a month, and we have 2 weeks left in this month, that will leave us with 3.25 to pull us through until March. And I expect we'll want to burn a little more over the next couple of weeks as temperatures bottom out.
Next year: 4 cords, minimum.
It's kind of pretty out in the suburbs. For most of my life, I lived, a bit militantly, in the city, convinced of its superiority in terms of walkability, the nearness of businesses & services & work, and the argument against sprawl. All well taken. Except the city in the winter is ugly. Heaps of blackened frozen snirt and unplowed broken roads. As for that vaunted "walkability," it's not so easy when few people shovel, and the walks are an ankle-snapping moon crater icescape. Grocery stores are always a trip best accomplished in a vehicle. Left turn signals, few, far between, and typically only working half the time in the city, are a functioning reality in the 'burbs. Most streets have a maniac lane where the maniacs can drive however fast they want without necessarily menacing you by riding on your rear bumper.
It's not too bad out here. Another few days, and we turn toward the sunlight.
The Leaning Tower of Snowman
The trees off the back porch during the snow
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