cats – grouchyfarmer

Catching Up: 3D Printing, Drought, Biking, and WTF is Wrong With Some People?

The Bambu P2S 3D printer has been working almost non-stop since I got it and it hasn’t missed a beat. I’m still amazed at how much the technology has improved since I had my old Flash Forge. It’s much faster, is as close to being “Plug ‘n Play” as a 3D printer can get. It has automated bed leveling, automated nozzle cleaning, automatic filament changing, automated calibration, etc.

All of the stuff that used to drive me nuts like doing manual bed leveling with the old Flash Forge is now taken care of automatically by the printer.

First thing I did was print a whole bunch of parts for my fume extraction system to make my life a little easier. Things like adaptors to go from the 4″ hose my extractor uses down to the size needed for my lasers. That makes life a lot easier.

A variety of other parts and gadgets were printed including some custom stuff for eldest son who dabbles in retr0-computers and occasionally need special parts that can’t be sourced elsewhere any longer.

And then I found out I can 3D print hose clamps. Seriously. Actual real hose clamps that work beautifully with my fume extraction system.

One of the most useful things I found to print was an extremely sturdy and very handy adjustable easel for my Wacom Cintiq graphics tablet.

I have a half dozen or more batteries for my Dewalt cordless tools and ran across this one day.

A battery carrier/storage thingie for my Dewalt batteries. This thing is so good and so useful I’m surprised it isn’t a commercial product.

My old 3d printer was, to be honest, little more than a toy that wasn’t good for much except printing mildly naughty anime figurines and novelty items. The technology and materials have now gotten so good it’s producing genuinely useful, durable parts. I’m really pleased with this thing.

I thought about doing some kind of review of the P2S but then decided to not bother. It’s been on the market for some time now and there are dozens of reviews alreayd out there on YouTube, etc.

There is some controversy with Bambu Labs, however. It’s been accused of trying to “lock down” its user environment to make it difficult to do things like use 3rd party slicing software and even filament from other makers. And there is some truth to that. Sort of. Apparently now you can use 3rd party slicing software with a bit of fiddling around.

And as for filament, yes Bambu would certainly love to have you buy materials from them and has made it extremely attractive to do so. Bambu filament comes with RFID tags that are read by the AMS which automatically determines what the material is etc. and automatically sets up all of the correct parameters for using that material. And yes, you will pay a bit more for that convenience. But damn, it works nice. No more scrambling to try to find the exact temperatures, flow rates, etc. for a spool of filament. And it doesn’t cost all that much more than generic filament does, to be honest. And if you buy in bulk they give you huge discounts that eliminates the price difference entirely in some cases.

And it will still work with generic filament. You just need to remember to set the temperatures, flow rates, etc. yourself if you go that way. I’ve gone through a half dozen spools of generic PLA I picked up at Hobby Lobby with no problems at all.

What it all boils down to is Bambu 3D printers are the best selling models on the market right now, and for good reason. My experiences with the P2S have been nothing but positive.

But enough of that, let’s get on with this.

It was an absolutely beautiful day yesterday. So nice that when I went out on the bike I ended up putting almost 15 miles on. Rolling down the trails through the woods was absolutely delightful.

But wow, it’s dry here. The branch of the Manitowoc river that runs under the old stone bridge north of town is almost completely dried up.

There are places where you could almost walk across the river without getting your feet wet. I have seen it worse.

And with the low water level crap like this starts to pop up:

WTF is wrong with people? Seriously. I would dearly love to have the people who toss their trash into the river get not just seriously fined but do jail time too. There is simply no excuse for this. We’ve fished old computers, television sets, tires, car parts, car batteries, refrigerators and in one case a complete suite of living room furniture including a sofa, loveseat and recliner, out of that river.

The DNR used to have a sign there warning people that they had cameras set up to catch people doing this. I noticed that the sign has, of course, been stolen. Sigh. The cameras are still up, though, hidden in the trees. So I sincerely hope that they catch the weasel who dumped these tires.

On a more pleasant note, we finally got some rain this morning! We got almost an inch of rain which we needed desperately.

Also MrsGF is finally back from almost a week long trip to Atlanta to some conference so I’m less grouchy than usual.

And to wrap things up, how about a cat holding a carrot?

Catching Up: Signs Finished, Solar Stuff, Flowers Everywhere, Engraving Lighters, Silly Cats, No More Hip Pain Somehow?

MrsGF finished up the last of the welcome signs the other day with about three coats of all weather polyurethane. We did four all together. We’re keeping one and these three are already spoken for. They turned out pretty nice I think.

We hit a milestone with the new EG4-12000XP inverter. We hit half a megawatt of production earlier today! We’re going to need every watt we can get out of that system because the big central AC unit is still on the grid and it’s been going for something like 3 weeks straight now since we shifted into this hot weather pattern. We decided to leave it on the grid because while the 12000XP would have enough oomph to handle it, I suspect it would would discharge our batteries to a point where I would become uncomfortable overnight. It’s the old style AC system, but it’s only a few years old so replacing it isn’t in the cards at the moment. If we’d known better at the time we would have gone for a heat pump system which is much more energy efficient but at the time we weren’t even dreaming of putting in whole house solar. I looked into it but a heat pump system would have been around twice the cost so I never seriously considered it. Oh, well. Live and learn, as they say.

Our electric rate here isn’t bad, about 20¢/KWh, which is cheap when compared to what those poor buggers out in California are getting hit with thanks to Newsome and the California legislature being owned lock, stock and barrel by the utility companies and the hundreds of thousands of dollars of ~~bribes~~… (cough cough), I mean “campaign donations” and lobbying $$ they pay out every year. But the handwriting is one the wall, as they say. Thanks to the huge amounts of power the massive data centers being built here in the state are gulping down now and will gulp down in the future, the utilities are going to have to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in new generating facilities, substations and high tension power lines to feed them, and you can be damned sure that if Microsoft, Meta, Oracle and the others building those facilities have anything to say about it, it’s going to be us consumers who are going to foot the bill, not them.

But on to a more pleasant subject. Laser engraving.

I had no idea but apparently Zippo lighters are still a thing with some people? I thought that with the rate of smoking going down every year the market for lighters would have shrunk as well but I guess I forgot about the people who smoke “recreational substances”, shall we call it? That’s still illegal here in Wisconsin but all you have to do is nip across the border to Illinois, Minnesota or Michigan if you want to light up.

I did the first one with the brewery logo on it to give to Kyle, one of the owners. And then I started playing around using the Lumos Flex from Wecreat and the fiber laser and wow, it does a nice job engraving stainless steel! Doesn’t take long, either. With the IR laser in my old Lumos it would have probably taken half an hour to do something like this. With the fiber laser it takes about 4 minutes. It actually eteches right into the metal so that design isn’t just discoloration, it’s actually etched in there and will never wear off. I’ve done about four of these for various people to give as gifts and they keep telling me I should put these up on Etsy or somewhere, but no thanks. I do not want to get into that rat race. Plain, genuine Zippo lighters cost me about $18 each. In order to make it worth my while I’d probably have to charge $35 – $40 for one and I don’t think anyone would be silly enough to pay that.

And then we got flowers! Wow, do we have flowers! Here are a couple.

As for the rest of the gardens I’m too lazy at the moment to go out and get pictures so you’ll have to settle for a description. The tomatoes are going gangbusters. They’re already loaded with green fruit. We have 6 plants this year. We were only going to put in 3 but we had 3 or 4 volunteers pop up and MrsGf didn’t have the heart to just pull them so she transplanted them to a better location and they’re looking just as good as the ones we grew from seed ourselves.

The carrots are thriving and we really need to thin them out. The beets? We’ve already been picking some and eating them. They’re doing fantastic. The celery is looking beautiful this year. When I’m mowing the lawn I can’t help but snip off a stalk to nibble on when I’m riding on the mower. If you’ve never grown celery yourself, please give it a try. You won’t believe how intensely flavored the home grown varieties are when compared to the commercial varieties they sell in the grocery store.

The onions are getting to the point where we’re thinking of starting to pull some and curing them off and putting them in storage.

We have a few zucchini plants as well and they’re producing beautifully. The nice thing about zucchini is that it has almost no flavor so you can slip it into anything and nobody will notice they’re eating something healthy. Tonight I’m going to do a zucchini-mushroom stir fry with lots of garlic and onions and parmesan cheese.

I’m eagerly awaiting the tomatoes. Absolutely nothing compares to the flavor of a ripe tomato fresh off the plant from the garden.

Let’s see, what else?

Oh, the hip! Almost forgot about that. I suffered for something like 3 weeks with pain in my right hip that was almost excruciating at times when I bent my leg the wrong way. It started to oh so slowly get better over time. But then the other day I woke up and got out of bed and suddenly realized that the hip didn’t hurt. At all. It was like someone just threw a switch. There’s a bit of soreness there but that’s because the muscles in the leg are stiff from not being used normally for so long.

So what happened? I have no idea. MrsGF thinks it might have been a pinched nerve and I suppose that’s possible?

Anyway, I’m still taking it easy because I’m terrified of doing something that might bring it back. But otherwise things are back to almost normal. I’m even back on the bike again but I’m keeping the riding limited to just a few miles and at a relatively slow pace for the time being.

Let’s see… Oh, almost forgot! Silly cats, right?

That’s Charlie over there in her new favorite stot to sit. If I scoot forward to type on the computer and there is any space at all between me and the back of the chair, she’ll squeeze in there. She is an absolute sweetie. I’ve never seen a cat that loves people as much as she does. She belonged to our daughter in law’s aunt but she had to move into an apartment that doesn’t allow pets so we volunteered to take her in and we’re so happy we did. She’s getting up there, about 14 or 15 years old now, and she has a heart murmur and a benign cyst on her neck that puts some people off but doesn’t seem to bother her at all. The cyst is inoperable because she can’t tolerate anesthesia. They tried once and her heart stopped and she almost died so unless it’s a genuine emergency neither we nor her vet are willing to try it again.

And that’s about it for now!

Hm? Oh, oh, wait… Oh no… That’s not a 3D printer on a truck heading this way, is it? No, it couldn’t be. I swore I’d never buy another one, didn’t I? I seem to distinctly remember saying that, didn’t I?

Updates & The Ever Popular Stuff

Okay, let’s get caught up with some stuff. Like…

Solar Update

The new solar panels are doing better than they have any right to, really. At least when the sun is shining, which hasn’t been often, alas. We’ve had lots and lots of clouds ever since the guys put them up back at the end of April. In case you missed the details, I now have 10, 420W bifacial panels up on the roof of the garage to replace the 2KW of cheap, 220W “Amazon Special” junkers that were leaning up against the back side of the garage.

These suckers start producing significant amounts of power as early as 8 AM if the sun is out. And even if it’s cloudy I’ve seen them producing as much as 1KW of power. If the weather would cooperate we’d be able to take the house almost completely 0ff-grid indefinitely, running off the battery bank at night and producing more than enough solar power in full sun to recharge the batteries and run the house.

This is a good thing because We Energies, our utility, has gotten totally out of control. We’ve had 6 rate increases since 2020, and there’s no end in sight. I just got notification in the mail today that now we’re looking at a 16% rate increase over the next two years. And I suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg. Microsoft, Meta, Oracle and several other companies are building mega sized data centers here in Wisconsin and our current electrical infrastructure simply cannot handle the new loads. Not even close. The company is buiding two entirely new generating facilities just to handle the increased load, and even with that they aren’t going to have enough capacity and are going to have to buy power from other utilities to try to make up the difference. It’s going to require also a massive expenditure for upgrading the transmission lines, new sub stations, etc. The company claims that the data centers are going to be paying for that but us consumers don’t believe that for a minute. We’ve been misled and lied to far too often to believe anything these utility companies tell us any more.

Laser Update:

I have an upgrade for the Lumos laser from Wecreat on order.

If you’re interested in my original “kinda review” of the Lumos you can find it here.

They just came out with a drop in replacement laser head for this thing that upgrades the diode laser to 15W and replaces the 3w infrared laser with a 20W fiber laser that’s capable of doing 3D embossing of metal. It’s ridiculously simple to replace the head. Just remove a single bolt and the whole laser head lifts right out of the base. Drop the new one in and bolt it down, then download a new version of their software and it’s good to go.

Or so “Pamela” at Wecreat tells me. It turns my standard Lumos into a Lumos Flex for less than half the cost of what buying the new Flex would cost me. It’s going to be probably 3 weeks before it gets here. It is, they tell me, being made right now. Once it gets here and I’ve had a chance to try it out I’ll let you know how it goes.

Cats and Laundry

This is an older photo and I don’t recall if I’ve posted it or not before. Doesn’t matter. Even if I did it’s worth running it again. Damn you should have heard her purring! She was so happy the whole bed was quivering.

Ooo! Warm laundry right out of the clothes dryer!

Weather

The weather here in NE Wisconsin has been exceedingly irritating. It’s the second week in May and we’re still getting temperatures down in the mid-20s at night. The other morning I got up and the grass was solid white with frost. I’m surprised that anything at all is growing out there.

The little greenhouse we have set up in the basement where we start our seeds is overflowing with plants, but we don’t dare put anything outside yet because if we do there’s a good chance a frost will hit and we’ll lose all of them.

We’ve gotten some rhubarb. That’s at least been doing pretty well. And the chives, of course. But chives are like weeds once they get established. I don’t know what variety we have out there but it is incredibly hardy. We’ve had them thriving out there in a corner that faces the SW and we’ve had fresh chives coming up while there’s still snow on the ground.

Stuff

I’m still making those silly coasters when the mood strikes me. Making these things is almost addictive.

When I first started this a few years ago I tried to make them all related to brewing, pubs, taverns, beer, etc. But that got old fast. Mostly because there really aren’t that many beer/drinking/brewing related jokes out there that will fit on a space as small as a coaster. And a lot of the ones that are floating around aren’t really all that funny, IMO.

So I started to slip in more snark and sarcasm and just plain silliness and no one seems to have minded so I’ve continued down that path, slipping in a more brewing appropriate joke as I’ve thought one up or found one I could steal.

Damn that’s a horrible photo. What the hell happened to the auto focus on this stupid phone?

And then there’s this over there on the right. I had no idea that Zippo lighters were even still a thing, but apparently they are quite popular and allegedly “collectable” with certain persons.

Not hard to do. With the IR laser in the Lumos it takes about 15 minutes per side, half an hour or so per lighter, to do the engraving. It does a pretty good job of doing a nice, relatively deep engraving that isn’t going to wear off rubbing against someone’s car keys in a pocket or whatever.

I was surprised at the cost of these things, about $18 each. I don’t think they’re worth it, personally. I suppose what you’re actually paying for is the brand name, not really the product itself.

Custom engraved lighters pop up on places like Etsy. A genuine Zippo, engraved, runs anywhere from $35 to as much as $70.

One thing I might try is something like this over there on the left.

Yes, that is actual real color on a piece of stainless steel. That is not inked or painted or stained or anything like that. The Lumos can indeed do color engraving of stainless steel using just the laser alone. Something to do with frequencies and diffraction patterns or something? Maybe?

I’ve only experimented with this a few times because it is a pain in the neck to get everything set up right. And the type of steel seems to have a great deal to do with how well it works. I’ve gotten decent results using these stainless steel cards. But I tried doing the same thing on these bare metal “Altoids” candy boxes I get cheap off Amazon and make into holiday/birthday gift card boxes, and the results have not been encouraging there.

What it boils down to is that to do color on one of these lighters would require experimenting and burning test patterns into one or more actual lighters to figure out what settings I’d need to get the colors I want. I’m reluctant to burn through two or three or more $18 lighters just to experiment.

Catching Up

So I went and did something I promised myself I wouldn’t do again, I got a video camera. Yes, I could use my iPhone to take videos but using a very expensive phone to make videos in situations where it could be easily dropped into rivers, mud holes and trails while biking, or inside of laser engravers, etc. did not seem like a good idea to me so when a GoPro turned up for sale at a huge discount, I bought the thing.

I suspect this is going to be one of those situations where “well it seemed like a good idea at the time” comes to mind when I find it covered in dust on a shelf after not using it for months. That’s what happened to the last video camera I had.

Anyway, there is an excellent chance you will be inflicted with videos in the future, so allow me to apologize in advance. Videos like, well, this one below which is not only the first video I took with the thing but also illustrates my latest project.

That is made from a kit called a “Marble Run”, the Spaceport edition. And it is without a doubt the most ridiculously complicated thing I’ve ever put together. I didn’t keep track of how many hours I have invested in building that thing, but it was a lot. Handling hundreds of parts, many of them so small I needed to use a needle nose pliers to put them in place and chasing tiny, tiny parts across the floor when they went flying were par for the course. And whoever engineered this thing is absolutely, positively, a bloody genius. The engineering and creativity behind designing and making something like this almost entirely out of nothing but wood and a few pins and a couple of screws, is mind boggling.

It’s difficult to envision just how complicated this thing is from that video so here’s a more detailed photo.

I mean just look at that thing. Trying to put all that together was bad enough, but can you imagine trying to design something like that from scratch? There are close to 500 individual pieces, most come in sheets of laser cut plywood of varying thicknesses.

And there is another one of these that is just as complicated waiting for me that eventually will be joined up with this one, along with third kit that is a motor drive and lighting system to drive both of them.

I don’t recommend a lot of products here, but this is one I would definitely recommend if you’re into building kits or 3D puzzles. It’s from a company called Rokr that makes a variety of these marble run type kits/puzzles for adults that range in price from about $30 on up to well over $100 depending on size and complexity.

The instruction/assembly manual is very well written but some caution is necessary because some of the illustrations can be a bit confusing. It’s generally broken down into subassemblies that are then connected together or to the main mounting board which makes it easier. It comes with everything you need, including any tools that are necessary. It includes sandpaper for smoothing off edges, wax for lubricating the gears and friction points, screwdrivers, etc. I would strongly urge you to also have on hand a small needle nose pliers for working with small parts especially if you have big, fumbly fingers like mine. And keep a bottle of instant glue with accelerant handy as well. If you are careful you won’t need the glue, but me? I managed to break a couple of small parts. I’d also recommend some very good lights as well.

Even more impressive was the thing actually worked after I got it together. I needed to do a bit of adjusting and in some cases some trimming to get everything to work smoothly. But having something this complicated actually work when I was done with it should give you an idea of how well the instructions are written.

And while I’m talking about videos, how about a kitty? Sure, why not.

That’s Marvelous Mercy The Wonder Cat and yes, you have to use her entire name when you call her or she will ignore you. She is a real sweety. She is considered a “senior” cat although you couldn’t tell it from looking at her. She’s about as sleek and athletic as they come.

If I do start doing more videos, there is the question of storage space. While WordPress gives me a more than generous amount of storage space here, these videos take up a huge amount of space so I suspect that what I’ll end up doing is uploading them to my Youtube account and just linking to them from here.

Well if I ever get around to it. If I start to do video stuff it means I’m going to have to learn how to use editing software. Ick…

Let’s see, what else? Oh. I made a clock! Well, several of them, actually.

MrsGF likes that one up there so much that it’s now hanging over the fireplace in the living room. Here’s another one that I did the other week that MrsGF has hanging up in her office.

I’m really surprised people don’t make more of these. They’re easy to make and cheap? You can make them out of any scraps of wood you have laying around, and these battery operated clock modules are ridiculously cheap. I picked up a box of 15 of them, complete with an assortment of hands, for $27. That’s about $1.80 each.

And I’ve run out of things to talk about for the moment. Aren’t you glad?

Coming up in the future: I’m putting together a list of on-line resources for craftspersons who dabble with laser engravers/cutters. That’s one of the most frequent requests I get. So I’m putting together a list of websites for things like free images, .SVG and other files you can use for cutting or engraving, resources for finding materials at decent prices, etc. So keep an eye out for that sometime in the next few weeks.

Garden Update

So here it is, mid-June, and the gardens here are going a bit crazy. everything is growing fast thanks to frequent rain and relatively mild temperatures. We have had critter problems, though. Here’s our pole beans, for example.

They should be much bigger than this but something, we suspect rabbits, ate the top leaves off the plants after they got about 4 inches tall. The red stuff you see on the plants and soil up there is crushed dried red pepper, a type normally used for making kimchi. I buy the stuff in 2 pound bags off Amazon. Whatever critters are eating our plants seem to dislike this stuff enormously. It’s a relatively inexpensive way to repel the little buggers without having to resort to traps or toxic chemicals. You definitely do not want to handle the stuff with your bare hands if you have cuts or scrapes, and make damned sure you wash your hands thoroughly after scattering it around because if you accidentally rub your eyes… Well let’s just say you’ll have the delightful experience of learning what it’s like to be pepper sprayed.

I never used to like cilantro but then a few years ago it was like a switch flipped in my head and I started to love the stuff. Why? Who knows.

We put in lots of cilantro this year. We were told by someone who supposedly “knows these things” that it would repel the critters eating our plants. It doesn’t. But it does taste amazing! I’m always astonished by the difference in taste and smell between the home grown stuff and even the “fresh” herbs we get at the grocery store. We bought a couple of bunches of fresh cilantro at Walmart in late winter for a special Mexican dinner we did and it was really rather sad. Had very little flavor. This stuff will knock your socks off. Bright, brilliant flavor and aroma… Damn I need to stop talking about food. I’m getting hungry.

MrsGF ran a batch through the dehydrator to see how that works out.

We planted quite a few carrots this year. We need to get out there and thin them out or it’s going to be a mess. Rabbits never bother carrots. Despite the Bugs Bunny cartoons, rabbits don’t like carrots all that much and they hate the green tops.

The onions… I don’t know what’s going on with the onions this year but they’ve been going nuts. I looked back at photos from the last couple of years and this year the onions are literally twice as big as they were at this time in previous years. I’m not complaining. I’m just wondering why?

The beets got hit hard by the critters. Almost all the beet tops were chewed off before we noticed and started putting out the pepper flakes. Some managed to survive but they look rather poorly. Just to make sure we get something we planted more. A bit late but we should still get something.

The celery is looking amazing as well this year. It’s already about 8 inches tall and looking beautiful. Celery is another one of those plants where there is no comparison between the flavor of the store bought varieties and the home grown ones. Interestingly, people are so used to the insipid flavor and aroma of grocery store celery that when they encounter really good, full flavor celery they think it’s too intensely flavored and don’t like it.

Let’s wrap this up with Doofus Cat…

That’s what I’ve started to call her because, well, that’s what she is, a doofus. I love her dearly and she’s a sweet heart but let’s face it, she’s just not very bright. The other morning she was trying to lick up a dark spot on the wood floor in the dining room because she thought it was a cat treat. Sigh…

She has her own comfy pillow back there in the office that she can snooze on. You can see it just to the lower left. But she’s decided she’d rather nap on top of the printer for some reason.

She is also a big kitty. She’s bigger than a lot of the dogs in the neighborhood. She weighs about 13 pounds and it’s all muscle. I’ve seen her do a standing high jump from the living room floor to the mantle above the fireplace, almost 5 feet straight up, without even straining herself.

Okay, wait a minute, we got 2 now??? And flowers!

Apparently Cat 1 cloned herself and we got two tabbies now? Sort of a matched set? Yeah, we got two of them now. That’s Cat 1 on the right and Cat 2 on the left. Or is it Cat 1 on the left and Cat 2 on the right? Both tabby, both large economy sized kitties and I’ve already resigned myself to constantly confusing which one is which.

Cat 2 is a sort of refugee. She was a shelter kitty who was adopted into a home where a pre-existing cat decided she hated her and beat the crap out of her every chance she had. Not a good situation. So we agreed to try taking her in and see how Cat 1 would handle having another kitty in the house. As you can see, Cat 1 has no problem with having a new roommate at all. The two of them have been together about 4 days now and are getting along just fine. They aren’t exactly cuddle buddies but there’s been no hissing or spitting or growling or fighting. In fact no drama at all.

And considering this is Cat 2’s fourth home in about 3 months she’s adjusting remarkably well. She spent about the first hour here under the sofa, then decided that was boring and went and sat under the bed for a while, and the next morning she was acting like she’s lived here all her life. She’s not a lap cat like Cat 1 is, but she’s become downright affectionate towards me.

We were nervous about how Cat 1 would handle an intruder but aside from eyeing her with suspicion for the first day or two there hasn’t been any problem at all. In fact I think the two of them colluded in a 4 AM raid on the butter dish this morning. I woke with a start upon hearing a loud crashing noise and rushed out to find the two of them sitting under the dining room table and pretending they had no idea how MrsGF’s favorite ceramic covered butter dish ended up in many pieces on the floor. They would have had to get a rather heavy, covered, ceramic dish, with a quarter pound of butter in it, lifted up over the top of a one inch thick cutting board, shoved about three feet along a counter and then onto the floor, and I don’t think either one of then could have done it by themselves so I think both of then were in on it.

So, it’s spring! Yeah, sure it is. Temperature was down around 28 degrees last night. Sigh… Good thing we haven’t got anything planted out in the gardens yet. We do have flowers, though. A few of the more daring plants have been putting on a show.

It’s wonderful to be seeing color out in the gardens again.

Let’s see, what else?

Oh, I mentioned before that we were going to be getting the roof on the house and garage replaced sometime this year. We had the contractor out here Monday morning to measure everything up, give us a quote, and now we have that scheduled for sometime in late May or early June. Estimated cost for that is going to be around $13,000. That’s actually a bit less than I had anticipated so I’m pleased with that.

Once the roof is replaced I can start thinking about putting up a permanent solar array on the south facing garage roof. Hopefully I’ll be able to finally get enough solar panels up there to adequately feed the solar power system so we can fully utilize it at last. Going to have to see what the budget can handle. Might have to wait a while for our household budget to be able to deal with about 5 KW of solar panels.

Cat Part 2

MrsGF made the cat her own sofa. Note the cord on the right side. It’s heated. No, the cat is not being spoiled. Not at all….

Woke up around 2 AM and found her in bed with me, snuggled up against my chest. Which was fine until about half an hour later she decided she needed to groom herself, and me. So I had to pick up the little goof and put her in her bed in the living room. Going to have to remember to keep the bedroom door closed.

Cat

We have a cat again! After we lost Meg to old age we weren’t sure we realy wanted another cat. But… I can’t believe how much I missed having a cat in the house. It was like there was this empty space in my life… Anyway, once again we have cat. Meet Charlie.

Like almost all of our other cats she is a sort of rescue kitty. Her owner is going in for ankle surgery and after that she is moving into an apartment that doesn’t allow pets so she had to give her up. Then we heard about it from some of our family and without even thinking I said “We’ll take her”. And here she is.

And she is amazing. i know, I know, everyone thinks their new cat is amazing but Charlie really is. She’s 12 years old and is the most mellow, affectionate, well adjusted kitty I’ve ever seen.

We were prepared for drama when Charlie moved in. Anyone who has ever had to move a cat into a new environment or took one into a new family will know what I mean. Cats generally are creatures of habit. They don’t like change. And before this kitty came along most of our cats haven’t exactly been, well, normal. They came from a variety of unpleasant situations where they often were not treated well. It sometimes took weeks, even months or longer before a new cat moving into our home adjusted and came to realize they were in a safe environment.

With Charlie, though? Charlie was always in a pleasant, loving environment from the time she was born and it shows. Within 10 minutes of coming into the house she’d decided she liked it here. She spent some time exploring, let us pet and brush her and make a fuss over her, purred at us a lot, rolled on the floor and asked for tummy rubs, had decided which chair was the most comfortable for naps. She showed us which toys she likes to play with, which brush she prefers. She loves snuggling and when she’s happy she has a purr you can hear from three feet away.

What it boils down to is we love her, and she seems to love us and her new home. This is the third day we’ve had her and every time I see her I grin like an idiot.

Damn I missed having a cat.

Garden Catch Up

Egads, I haven’t written anything here in a long time so let’s get this started with catching up with what’s been going on in the gardens.

As you probably know by now we had what looks like the hottest summer of all time here in Wisconsin with average temperatures above normal all season long. On top of that we’ve been under drought conditions almost all summer as well. We just went through yet another multi-day heat wave, with high temperatures pushing 95F here. And now we’re finally going to be getting down to more seasonable temps. It’s currently about 55 here at 7 AM and won’t get much above 60 they tell me. We were supposed to get some badly needed rain as the cold front came through, but nope, except for some spotty showers we got pretty much zip.

But let’s look at some butternut squash…

Oops, wait a minute, that’s not a squash, that’s Solar Cat, isn’t it?

Ah, here we go, that’s the squash up there piled up in the old coaster wagon. And yes, they’re massive this year. We were watering those suckers almost every evening all summer long and now we’re finally getting our reward. They’re beautiful. MrsGF and I both love squash (she makes a squash soup that would probably make Gordon Ramsey jealous). But we sure as heck can’t handle all of those. We’ll end up giving a lot of them away to friends or anyone else who can use them. That’s part of the fun of gardening, giving stuff away to friends who don’t have the space to have a garden themselves or swapping our stuff for stuff other people grew that we didn’t have room for. In fact MrsGF just swapped one of those for a big bag of pears from one of our neighbors.

We tried a new variety of tomato this year, something called Amish Golden Slicers. We got the seed from Jung and they’ve been well above average. Tomatoes can come in a wide variety of colors ranging from gold to orange to red to purple to even green. What matters most is not color but flavor and texture. Some tomatoes are best for eating fresh, some are better for making sauces, some are in between. These are probably best for eating fresh. They have an amazingly lush, slightly tart flavor that I absolutely love, although MrsGF isn’t all that thrilled with them for some reason. We only put in 3 plants this year but that’s still more than we can eat fresh, so we’ve been making sauces and soups with them.

We put in lots of peppers of various types, bell, banana and jalapeno, and they’ve all been doing amazingly well this year for some reason. The bell peppers especially. They’re freaking huge this year. We’ve had to stake up some of the plants because the weight of the fruit has been making them fall over. Again way more than we can use ourselves so we’ve been giving those away too.

And of course there’s the jalapenos. We have 5 of those, two in pots on the front stairs and three in the raised beds. The two in pots didn’t do well but the ones in the raised bed have been producing way more than normal just like the bells have been.

MrsGF put in a couple of banana peppers just for some variety. We’ve always had good luck with banana peppers and this year is no exception. Lots of very nice fruits, good flavor.

Wax beans were just sad this year even though we watered them just about every day. I think it was just too hot for them.

Alas the wax beans did not do very well this year. I suspect that the heat didn’t help them any. The pole beans we put in weren’t the best either but with them it was because little four footed critters were nibbling them off almost as soon as they started to grow.

Then our son brought over this weird houseplant…

Oh, wait, that’s another cat, isn’t it? We catsat our youngest son’s kitty while he was gone on a three day weekend. That’s Kai the Wondercat. I love her. She hates me. Go figure.

And let’s wrap this up with some flowers because why not?

Autumn

The weather here in NE Wisconsin was absolutely beautiful for a few days and I took advantage of that and got out on the bike for a while. But that’s changing fast. They’re now talking about a possibility of snow for us by next week. Sigh…

Jalapeno peppers still growing outside in mid October? Yep. Actually they’re doing better now than they did all summer. I didn’t get more than a dozen or so peppers of both plants during the summer but now the dopey things are covered with flowers and baby fruits. Go figure…

But that being said we have no right to complain. The fall weather has been pretty darned nice. We still haven’t had a hard freeze. We’ve had a few mornings when there was frost on the ground but not enough to really cause any damage. We still have flowers growing around the house and I have two jalapeno pepper plants that are still in flower for heaven’s sake.

Some of the flowers that have survived this fall so far are a bit surprising, like the alyssum. This little cluster of flowers popped up in the spring all by themselves, which surprised me a great deal. But I was very pleased to see them because I love those tiny little flowers, not just because they’re beautiful but because some types of alyssum are amazingly fragrant.

Getting out on the backroads and trails on the bike this fall has been great fun. I’m really going to miss being out there every day once winter hits. It’s been especially interesting out there because I’ve been seeing a lot of reptiles and amphibians out there, far more than usual. I’ve seen dozens of snakes, usually grass snakes and the like. We have two of those little beauties living in the backyard. Unfortunately they’re fast little buggers and my attempts to get them on camera haven’t been very successful. I’ve seen quite a few of them out in the wild as well. Unfortunately I’ve also seen quite a few of them flattened on the roads as well because some of them have a habit of sunning themselves on the roadway.

I’ve seen quite a few turtles out there too, including Fred, who is a regular sight down near the stone bridge that goes over the river.

Almost any sunny day I’d find Fred sunning himself on his favorite spot. He’s a cute little guy, maybe about six inches across with beautiful markings. I’ve managed to get about six or seven fairly decent photos of him.

Most of the migrating birds are gone now. I’ve seen a few cranes still hanging around but those will be gone soon. Ducks and geese are mostly gone. I’ve seen very few birds coming to the feeder in the yard as well. I haven’t had to refill in it some time now. But this time of year the seed eating birds are finding more than enough to eat out there in the wild.

Let’s see, what else? MrsGF and I are sketching out plans for major changes to the gardens now that those big trees are down. Now that the area back there is getting full sun it opens up a lot of options. We want to move two of the raised vegetable beds over to that area because they’re now getting shaded out by a fast growing maple where they are now. The area where the beds are now may become occupied by a garden shed because we need the storage space. We want to put a large decorative raised bed where the stump from the ash tree is located, one that matches the existing bed we have now that surrounds the little maple.

That’s not going to be a cheap project, though. If we do everything we’ve been thinking of it’s probably going to end up costing us in the neighborhood of $5K when it’s all said and done.

We’re still waiting for the garage door company to get the new doors in so they can replace the 30+ year old garage doors and openers. They’re in pretty rough shape and I don’t think they’ll last the winter.

Let’s wrap this up with a siamese cat because why not?

Meg, we’re not sure how old she is but she’s at least 16, maybe 17, and an absolute sweetheart. This foot rubbing thing is fairly new with her but I’m told it isn’t uncommon with kitties. She’s turned into quite the lap cat. If there is a lap anywhere in the house, she will find it and sit on it. She has this thing now where when she’s on my lap she likes to climb up on my chest and rub her face in my beard which is cute but that cat’s claws are like little razors and when she gets relaxed she starts doing this kneading thing it gets a bit interesting.

Oh, almost forgot, the new vacuum thingie. It’s a Shark self emptying robotic vacuum. Normally I wouldn’t have bought one of these but I got the dopey thing on some kind of sale on Amazon for less than half the normal retail price. It was marked down to $200 or so from $500, and I admit that it was sort of an impulse buy.

Now we had a robot vacuum before, one of the early Roomba machines, and it was utterly horrible in every single way. It was incredibly noisy. It couldn’t deal with even 1/4″ tall thresholds between rooms, couldn’t deal with, well, it couldn’t deal with anything, really. It fell down the basement stairs twice. It would just stop dead in its tracks for no apparent reason. And even worse it was damn near worthless at actually cleaning anything.

This one is actually surprisingly good. It maps the rooms as it cleans so it can develop a more efficient pattern of movement. It doesn’t just scurry around at random. It’s been able to negotiate even the rather steep threshold between the dining room and living room. It wanders back to its dock and recharges itself when it needs to and when the battery is topped off it picks up where it left off. And best of all it empties itself! The bin on the dock has to be dumped every couple of weeks or so but that’s no big deal. It hasn’t fallen down the basement stairs yet. And best of all it does a pretty darned nice job cleaning the floors.

I’m not quite sure what in the world it’s doing under the sofa, though. It seems to spend an inordinate amount of time under there when it’s cleaning. Since it has wifi I suspect it’s looking at porn while it’s under there.

Anyway we’ve had this thing for a couple of weeks now and we’ll see how it goes. So far we like it. Even the cat doesn’t mind it.