A day of many blessings

 

A couple of days ago I realized that one of the things that makes me feel unsettled is when our yard and neighbourhood is a little unloved. We had been away for the better part of three weeks and the weeds took over large swaths of Heather's flower beds and the empty lot next door. In fact, some of the more aggressive weeds in the middle of the empty space to the east of our place were towering over three feet. 

I'm a big believer in broken window theory and like to do everything I can to keep our "windows" clean and crack free.

Broken Windows theory, in criminology, proposes that visible signs of crime and disorder in an environment encourage further crime and disorder, including more serious crimes. Essentially, it suggests that maintaining order by addressing minor offenses can prevent the escalation to more significant criminal activity.

I started by doing some weeding for Heather, which felt great. But internally, I knew it was the jungle next door that was bothering me. I played with different scenarios in my head ranging from pulling out the whipper snipper (hours of effort) to buying a gas powered lawn mower (expensive but expeditious). In the end, I sent a note to the owners of the lot and asked if they were still planning to build this season or not. If construction was looming it would have been completely useless to chop down the weeds. I didn't hear back and my unsettledness continued.

Finally, I put a post in the High River RESPECTFUL Rant and Rave group asking if anyone would be willing to rent me their lawn mower. Response was immediate and generous. My neighbour Alex offered up his mower for free and jokingly asked if I could trim around his fence. I jumped right on it and happily trimmed up his front yard. His mower was powerful enough to knock down the worst of the weeds.

Then Jim offered to give me a lawn mower that he no longer uses. 

"The only catch is that you have to manually change the mower height," he warned. 

So, after finishing the first cut on Wednesday, Jim dropped by with his mower on Thursday. It was set quite low, so I gave it a test run and did an additional cut of the empty lot. It worked perfectly and now the formerly scraggy empty lot looks like a manicured lawn from a distance. Way better. 

I finally heard back from the owners of the lot and shared with them the kindness of strangers that allowed me to tame their property. They were very grateful. They don't live in High River and in thanks for them allowing us to use their land as a lay down yard during our construction phase, I volunteered to shovel their sidewalks and maintain the yard until they build. 

When we arrived home from our Yukon adventure one week ago, we discovered that our solar array had been fully installed and was ready for the town inspector. That inspection happened a couple of days ago and the final report was submitted to Fortis. They gave Rocky Mountain Solar Co. the thumbs up to turn on our system yesterday morning. By midmorning, our 54 solar panels were producing power and feeding it back onto the grid. If I'm reading the app correctly, we produced 42.9 kWh on our first day, which turned out to be largely cloudy. With sunshine on the menu for today, that number will be significantly larger by day's end.

Heather and I were like kids in a candy store looking at the various stats as the day proceeded. Our solar array was a huge investment, but an integral component of our vision for this next phase of our lives. We designed this move to High River so that we will be able to be mostly self sustainable and reduce our impact on the environment. Generating solar power is a big part of that vision.

While the solar array was being constructed, a team from SEED Homes was making some improvements inside our house while we were away. The bamboo floor, which was initially installed as a floating floor on electric heating pad (in floor heating), was causing problems. There was too much give in the boards and annoying gaps were popping up throughout the home. SEED had purchased a lot of this particular flooring and decided they needed to permanently fix the problem. The crew removed all the boards on the west half of the house and installed new ones, using glue this time. The floor we arrived home to is super tight and completely quiet. The east side of the house will be done in the next couple of weeks.

The last major project that SEED Homes is doing is installing a custom designed HVAC system in both of our buildings. Errors in design were made at the outset which resulted in a forced air heating system that was drawing an incredible amount of power during the cold months. Additionally, on the coldest days, the system was unable to maintain a comfortable temperature in the house. As our home was their very first build, mistakes were made. SEED Homes has been addressing all of those including the heating system. If all goes well, the deficiency list should be all crossed off later this fall.

I tried writing this post last night. However, as I age, doing things in the evening seems more challenging. In the early mornings my brain functions more efficiently. Writing is a therapeutic activity for me. It helps me sort things out and serves as public journal of sorts. If you've read this far, thank you. I know this was a longer post than normal.