Post 23 – Little Stories from a Small Place

For those of you who have been following my posts, this post will mainly be an update on small domestic matters that I have been exploring recently.

First, spring has well and truly arrived here. Two weeks ago it was really cold with our heating system running most of the day. For the last week it has been wonderfully warm, with the blossom on the fruit trees looking great, the flowering shrubs in the garden coming into bloom and the ever-growing grass and weeds verdant. Less wonderful is the arrival of the blow flies and house flies that manage to infiltrate inside despite insect screens. As a result of the change in weather, I am getting ever closer to an annual picture of our electricity consumption, with us only buying about 3-5 kWh of electricity a day, for each of the last few days. Yeah! A huge reduction in cost. What has struck me though is that I still do not know how much electricity it takes to run this house. I know how much we buy from the grid and I know how much we export to the grid and I have an idea of the theoretical capacity of our solar panels, but I do not know either how much electricity we generate each day or the amount of our generated capacity that we use. I will check to find out if the invert-er records the amount of generated electricity (parked) but I think I have been down that path before and the answer is no. I know I can buy devices that monitor and record overall electricity use in your house, and I have had one in the past, but the one I had didn’t work well because our house is too far away from our smart meter and so the signal kept dropping out. This is the type of device that I will, once again, further explore installing because I really, really would like to be able to say how much electricity we need each year to run our house.

The second piece of news to report, which is linked to the growing grass of spring, is that my new push mower arrived. For those of you who, like me, think that using such a mower is a good idea because it doesn’t require any fossil fuels and it provides exercise along with an outcome (cut grass), then here is the low down on the idea. First, do not let the grass you are intending to mow get too long. I have been cutting the lawn inside my walled garden every second day, using the mower on its highest cut setting and it produces a wonderful result. Two weeks ago, I tried it for the first time, when the grass was longer, and it required a lot of backwards and forwards pushing to make it work. The job got done but not without some doubts on my part as to the merit of the machine. The second ‘heads up’ on the mower is make sure the grass is dry before you cut it. I remember my parents, both of whom equally cut the lawn at home, always said that you had to wait for the grass to dry before you started cutting, even though they had a powered mower. My experience since those days, is that it is easier to cut grass if it is dry but it is not essential, if you are using a powered mower. I suspect Mum and Dad were just reflecting the ‘rule’ from the days when the grass at their respective childhood homes was cut with a push mower. Now that I have completed the ‘mower technology’ circle, and cut at least some of our grass with a push mower, the rule about making sure it is dry before you cut is a really good one. The final thing I have to say about push mowers is that they are really not suitable for large areas. I still have to use the ride on mower to keep the grass down around most of the property and the ride on mower uses unleaded petrol – not a lot but enough. So, sometime in the future, I will research what is being developed as far as bio-fuels for mowers (parked) is concerned.

Having shared my updates on small domestic matters, I will report on some of my recent reading on climate change and global warming. I came across the following two articles that fit my ‘really’ category nicely so I thought I would share them.

Really …..

It is foreshadowed that there is going to be a world-wide shortage of coffee, partly because more is being drunk and it is expected that demand will continue to rise, but partly because increasing land temperatures are forcing coffee farmers further and further up the mountains to cooler climates. Understandably, there is a limit to how much farming can be undertaken on very steep land so drink up my coffee loving friends!

and Furthermore …..

I think, or at least I hope, that concern about global warming and climate change is becoming mainstream. How much more ‘mainstream’ could it get than the Governor of the Bank of England telling the world that climate change is a huge risk during a speech to the insurer Lloyd’s of London. Two very conservative institutions meet a very edgy topic. It’s worth reading the Governor’s whole speech but here is the conclusion:

“Our societies face a series of profound environmental and social challenges. The combination of the weight of scientific evidence and the dynamics of the financial system suggest that, in the fullness of time, climate change will threaten financial resilience and longer-term prosperity. While there is still time to act, the window of opportunity is finite and shrinking.”

During my two-week break from posting on this site, I have been thinking about the role each of us can play in mitigating and adapting to global warming; I have wondered if we have a role at all beyond the political; my conclusion is that we do have a role and our personal responses to global warming are mirrors of the range of possible political responses and so next week, that is what my post will be about. Drink that coffee while you can. Bye for now, Jane.