Good Morning!!!! 76F @ 4AM. Partly cloudy. Areas of smoke and haze are possible, reducing visibility at times. High 99F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.
Yesterday's Fire Weather Watch has turned into a Red Flag Warning, all the way through Tuesday morning. We're to expect dry lightning again.
12,000 lightning strikes over a 72 hour period last week led to over 560 fires, many of which are still burning.
I had a similar woods behind my suburban house growing up, Drew. Maples, oaks, beech, and sycamore trees, with a few pines thrown in here and there. A little stream ran through it, there was an abandoned grave yard with headstone dates from the late 1800s, and behind it were a golf course and a junk yard. Oh my gosh, the adventures we had! While I was away at college, they bulldozed it and put in condominiums...
Noting worse than being treated like a doddering old fool just because you show a few wrinkles and some gray hairs, eh Eric? Let'em think that, then let'em have what's comin' to 'em, I say.:laughing:
That little woodchuck could do with a dose of lead poisoning, RS.
Seems like recycled railroad ties would be less expensive and hold up better than PT, Thomas.
Are parts available for Instant Pots, Don?
Took a look at the solar panels yesterday, and there's no ash to be seen. Plenty of rain splashed and dried dust on 'em, though, and am thinking maybe I should give 'em a good hosing. Have to do it early morning before they heat up too much, though.
EDIT: Almost forgot. I fired up the generator yesterday and let it take the A/C loads, which only amounted to 4.5 kW. Only a quarter of its capacity, but it's the best I can do. Let it run for twenty minutes, then shut it off; on and off with two button pushes, easy as pie. Controller was configured to not sell power to the utility when the generator is running, so maybe next time I'll turn that option off to see if it'll put more load on it. Have to be careful not to load it too much, though; I don't wanna light up the whole neighborhood!:laughing:
Got another certified letter from the county yesterday, threatening me with abatement if I didn't sign up for their tree removal program. They're forcing people to remove fire damaged trees that might fall onto public,
and private, roads. There's an abandoned road that runs for about a hundred feet along one edge of my property that leads down to an equally abandoned boat launch. I suppose there could be a tree or two that might fall onto it, but it's private property! It's not an easement on my land, and the county says it's not theirs to maintain. The county wants Right of Entry papers signed to let them come in and look for bad trees, then remove them. Or they say I can remove them at my own expense. Don't understand how they can force anything on private land, but without hiring an attorney, how am I gonna fight 'em? So I spent yesterday afternoon wading through their paperwork, and ended up signing ROL papers for the inspection part. But I hand wrote and initialed requirements that I be present for the inspection and that I agree to the date and time. Then I'll decide what to do based on what they find.
Took another shot at scratch pizza last night, using a jar of spaghetti sauce and a package of pizza dough mix. The dough didn't come out as nice as the last recipe I tried, and it stuck ferociously to the aluminum pizza tray it cooked on in spite of a heavy dose of corn meal under it. But what little I could pry off was crispy, and the flavor was quite good. Next time I'll use the recipe again, and try rolling the dough out on floured cloth instead of the plate. Maybe that'll keep it from sticking. What I'd really like to do is get it to slide off the plate and onto the pizza steel on the BBQ. Now that would be a crispy crust, as long as it didn't stick...:licking:
Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their weekend!
