climate change

Here we are once again in Forest fire season, hearing about the millions of acres of trees that have been burned in Canada. Trees that provided us some protection from Climate change, creating more climate change in their demise. Hard not to dwell on, but……. Looks like a full…. sun?

Perhaps in remembrance of all of those trees lost we can start using Bamboo (or recycled TP) to wipe our butts, instead of having more trees cut down for that purpose. I read once that Costco was using old growth forest trees to make toilet paper. I guess we never talk about these “things”. ( I remember wondering, as a kid, if the Flintstones ever used the toilet. )

I guess we are puttering along attempting to do our part in cooling this planet, or at least not warming more. I am sure that there are those whose carbon footprint is much smaller than ours, but also there are those with greater footprints too. We have found that many of the changes we have made have actually started saving us money as well.

In March of this year we tripled our solar panels.

There is a government program that provides for a 5000.00 grant as well as a 10 year interest free loan for solar panel installation. (Our additional panels cost 14,000). So we figured that we pay an average of 180 per month for electricity, it would not make a lot of difference to be making loan payments instead, so technically we figure we got the solar panels for free. Our loan payments have worked out to 120 dollars a month for 10 years interest free, and our electric consumption looks like this.

So this is what the usage looks like. All the power we generate that we do not use, goes back to the grid giving us a credit. (you can see the negatives on this graph) What this means is that we are actually making money in this heat. The way BC hydro does it is that they balance all of the numbers each March and if they still owe you, you get a check. We actually have 2.5-3 months in the winter that the sun does not hit our panels, so the money we are “making” now, might just be spent in the winter 🥶

8 years ago we bought a fully electric car, and the power that our solar panels capture, is actually charging our car. SOOOO for most of the year we are not affected by gas prices. We essentially drive for free from energy from the sun.🌞

It is a freeing feeling, not being affected by the price of oil, or the price of electricity.

I should point out that I never took on any of these endeavours to save money, and am reminded all the time that these changes in energy consumption are expensive. But they have worked out well for us at a time we are heading into retirement and lower income.

I am continuing to make my toques, despite poor sales in this heat. 🥵 (but fall is right around the corner, RIGHT?) The yarn is made from recycled plastics, which is where fleece also comes from. I have recently read a book called “Unraveling” that defends the use of wool over recycled plastics (fleece) because tiny particles get into the water system and eventually to the oceans. There are apparently special filters you can use on your washing machine to prevent the particles from getting further down the water chain.

We have completed our garlic harvest and they are hanging to dry in our shop. We are thrilled with the size our garlic. We owe that to the large load of compost we had delivered from Spa Hills, a company that has bins all over Salmon arm and area, that composts everything, from animal remains at the chicken farms to food waste from restaurants. They compost at a very high temperature to ensure the material is disease free. SOOO it is strong stuff, and….. yes, smelly to begin with.💩

We have been selling “fresh’ garlic at the market for now before it is fully dried.

We did make a large batch of dill pickled garlic scapes and are now waiting the 6 “recommended” weeks to try them.

We have been camping at some lakes near where we live, and I discovered that you can really sneak up close to a bear in an electric car. …… to get a great picture. He did not ..hear… me coming. Isn’t he HUGE? (or she)

We have become a smoothie family, in trying to have smoothies for lunch each day. We have picked and frozen 20 lbs of fruit so far this year with direct plans for Smoothies. Although we get all of the recommended vegetable servings each day, I find it hard to meet the fruit recommendations. Hence the smoothies. We just put whatever fruit we have in freezer plus some cashew milk and then veggies such as celery and cucumbers. I throw in some rolled oats as well. We are studying up on the best machine for making them as my mini bullet is on its last legs.

Well so there is another blog, I have fallen behind as I let my subscription lapse, but am all paid up now.

thank you for reading much love

Janet, Ken and Tucker

Sometimes you just need to reset your entire brain. Turn it off and turn it on again and see what comes up. So on August 2nd, we left. WE just left. We decided to leave….. after a year and a half of covid and then the 2 weeks of being UNDER THE heat dome and then another month of smoke and fear of fire. We decided that we had built our home as fire proof as we could and there was little we could do here anyways ……. other than go MAD……😤

We packed up motorhome and drove down to the Olympic peninsula, and …. rebooted. Tried to find that place of mind that we always get to when we go away in the winters, where all we really need to worry about is …. where we are going to camp today, what will do DO today and what we will have for supper.

Because it was peak of summer, we could not find a camping spot anywhere, and Tucker gets so pissed at all the other dogs in campgrounds anyways…. so we dry camped, which Ken has us set up for in this new RV. We have enough solar to be able to run the CPAP (Ken’s) all night and have plenty left over for charging things and lights. No Air-conditioning though, which was only an issue one night. There was a heat wave while we were down in Washington and coastal towns that usually never get that hot, were well over 35 C 95F….. But we have resolved that we could rectify that easily by getting a small fan, just to move air. The nights were cool.

We were able to travel down to Washington, because we have dual citizenship US/Canadian. The US border is closed to people from Canada and Mexico driving across border, but flying is totally open. Seems kind of crazy. We were not even asked about Vaccination or covid tests. We camped for the most part at Casinos. No booking required, and long as you are self contained, people just seem to come and go as they wish. You DO have to check in with the casino and some places you had to get a “rewards card”. I usually (purely out of obligation)went into casino and “parted with some money” 🙂 for our camping. WE WERE impressed that being on indigenous lands, they were quite strict about masks. I read somewhere that First Nations have the highest rate of being fully immunized.

Our destination was La Push, a place we DID have a reservation on the western coastal side of the Olympic penninsula. It is a First Nations resort area, and they were VERY strict about masks, because they had been closed down for a year because of covid. Many lives and livelihoods would be affected by an outbreak.

These are Poppy Jasper, the rocks that are unique to the olympic penninsula. The way that the different coloured minerals settle creates a lovely poppy appearance which is accentuated with polishing them (with tumbler).

These are turtle rocks, another stone found primarily on the olympic penninsula. They ALSO polish up nicely, and I am hoping to put the poppy jasper and the turtle rocks into the floor design. (they match my cabinets 🙂)

Thanks to the rock books we were able to find many lovely beaches that were empty except for us and a few other rock hounds.

This was a scene I thought I captured on camera, on a farm, in a rural area. After I watched for awhile, I realized that both of them were statues…. ODD place to have statues this perfect.

OH and beer….. the Pacific Northwest is known for the beer, so we filled our growlers (a few) times.🐅

These are called concretions…. rock has formed around bits of grass or something and formed these symmetrical shapes. The beaches north of Port Angeles were covered with them, very interesting, some of them that had worn away had crystals in them.

Tucker is NOT a water dog, but just wandered out during the heat wave.

We USUALLY travel in the winter, and the tides tend to be higher in the winter, and lower in the summer, so in the summer THESE are the kinds of things we get to see with the low tides.

We DO love the ocean, and we found ourselves wondering what we are doing living where we are. There seems to be no signs that, despite the horrendous summer we have had, that anyone is willing to do anything to alter the course of climate change. So we will likely continue to have very hot, very smokey summers. The almighty dollar will always win. We are about to have a federal election and there is very little talk about climate change…… SO we did find ourselves looking at places we might dream of living. We are like that. We do those kinds of things, I guess it goes along with the vagabond way we are.

I just LOVE these HUGE barnacles.

We got home a week ago, we had to get covid tests and fill out all of our info on arrivecan app. The covid test was $189 each and it was hard to find a place that we could get the test. The results took about 36 hours.(we found a lab called anylabtestsnow……)

Many years ago we went to a medical conference that was geared for physician health. They introduced us to a concept that we were just reminded of on this trip. TARZAN HOLIDAYS. Tarzan never let go of the “rope” before he had another one to grab onto. The suggestion was that you never come home from a holiday until you have planned the next one. SOOOO we have booked our next trip a month after we got home from this one, and will be back on the olympic penninsula soon.

Oh and ONE more thing. I turned 65 on this trip and decided to make the day special, I would get a hair cut. I have not had a proper hair cut in over 2 years. (I have been cutting it myself). I found a very lovely salon in La Conner and had a wonderful visit with a stylist whom I just loved. I have decided that I am going to go to La Conner for my haircuts from now on.

Back in BC…. we encountered very heavy smoke on the Coquihalla, and even donned our N95 masks. But by the time we got home our lake has cleared out and we have had great clear skies since.

We have been home a week now, I am back to work and mask mandates have been implemented. I am totally appalled at the number of people still wishing to work in LTC (with the most vulnerable people) who have not been vaccinated. MORE ON THAT IN NEXT BLOG

Much love to all, Janet, Ken and Tucker the OCEAN dog.

mymostrecentobsession

All the sun brings us.. and more🌞

sometimes you need a reboot….