Moon & Venus

The moon, Venus, and Jupiter have been in excellent alignment over the last few weeks, culminating in their closest positions on 15th March. I saw that, but only got the camera out on 26th. Really, I need a longer lens to capture the moon at a decent size (something 750mm or longer, for frame-filling splendour), and my longest lens is only 125mm (and I don't have a tele-adaptor). I hanker after Sigma's 150-500 OS lens, and occasionally borrow Philip's 100-400 Canon (which is beautiful, but shorter and more expensive than the Sigma). I'd also love a proper telescope with camera adapter, admittedly.

Never mind: cropped, a shot of Moon and Venus (Jupiter's now sunk down towards the horizon):

Silence

We've had a couple of difficult weeks, and so I've not been posting. Partly malaise, partly nothing to say.

The biomass installation, which was basically complete by 3rd March, hasn't been a success. The installation had a number of pitfalls, which we managed, but the system isn't working as expected. The log boiler's fuel consumption is much, much higher than expected: although I'd got figures for efficiency in advance, and worked on the basis of a figure reduced from this (which seemed wise!), the actual in-use efficiency has so far been about 55%, instead of an expectation of at least 80%.

This poses a real problem: it means that our per year wood use rockets up by 50%, which takes it out of the realm of straightforward, and into logistical nightmare. It also hits the cash saving per year quite hard, and also makes the day-to-day operation difficult (physically larger volume of wood each day requiring loading, and we're not in the house all day to keep topping it up).

Secondly, the delivery side seems less effective than the oil system. That is, where the oil system burnt, say, 100kWh worth of oil for a day's heating, the biomass is using, say, 110kWh on a comparable day. This is after the heat's been produced (measured by a proper, Class 2, heat meter). So, in all, we're looking at a system that's about 50% efficient compared to about 90% for the oil. Not good.

The only saving grace, at this point, is that we haven't paid the full invoice, only the deposit, so we still have a lever when dealing with the installer. However, at the moment, we simply can't process, season, and store enough wood for a winter, so the whole system's not fit for purpose: we may well have to rely on an oil backup, which we didn't want.

In brighter news, when we haven't been madly cutting, splitting, and stacking firewood, we have managed to sow plenty of seeds, and now have a lot of baby beetroot, leeks, peas, celeriac, salad leaves and radishes. The kale, sprouts, parsnips, and carrots aren't up, yet, but there you go.

The over-winter alliums (onions, garlic, elephant garlic, and spring onions) are all still doing well, and look they're starting to bulk up. That's pleasing, as we're going to start running low on last year's autumn-harvest onions soon.

The spring bulbs are doing nicely, with lots of scilla and puschkinia up now. The daffodils are starting to come out in force: there are just about enough to start cutting some to bring inside. The 'winterized' front garden's looking great; we're very pleased with it. The dogwoods, hellebores, primroses, and the winter hanging baskets (heathers, sedge and cineraria) have really made it look good. The clematis outside the kitchen door is coming back up, too, and the buddleja is sprouting. Some of the early tulips ('Pinocchio') are up, too, though the Cheerfulness daffodils aren't.

Deer on the Hillside

This morning's visitors (© Ian 2012)

Wood and Seeds

We spent Friday splitting and stacking wood, with medium efficacy; Jenny and Philip's current foster children also left, so we spent some time with them. Saturday and today has been more wood; stacking some pre-prepared wood, and sawing/splitting/stacking fresh wood. We're getting the hang of it: today's work was quite effective. We've planted more seeds—so far we've got plenty of leeks, beetroot, beans, peas, and now some celeriac and tomatoes in.

We had a brief interlude mopping up after a leak in the airing cupboard, which came through the kitchen ceiling, too...

Back to work tomorrow!

Gorse

Another day in the garden; this time clearing a gorse that's outside the dining room window. We cut it down a while ago (September '09, I think), but never finished the job. We have, now, though it took an effort to get the three sets of roots out. While I struggled with those, Liz has started ploughing through the neighbouring cotoneaster, and we've made good progress.

Before/during clearing the gorse and cotoneaster (© Ian 2012)

Outside the workshop door, there are a couple of tiny beds (mostly gravel, it has to be said), which have some thorny horrors in them. Unattractive, and irritating. We have, therefore, removed them. I'm not actually certain what they were, and don't really mind. I'm going, at some stage, to build the walls of the beds up a bit, so there's more depth, and then we can plant some blackberry cultivars we ordered. For now, they're in pots in the space.

In the newly found space, we've planted some oriental lilies and three hemerocallis ('Calico Jack', 'Destined to See', and 'Tigger').