2022-03 Sunshine

The sun was really coming out this month. This was our first spring with solar so it was awesome to see the steady climb in output after a dark winter. The graph below shows the solar production for this month.

Nature Reserve Visit

There was still plenty of snow left and it was sunny and mild. I went with some friends to the Nature Reserve. My girlfriend was really ill this month so couldn’t come. There were some igloos made for fun, and we had hotdogs by the campfire.

Persistent Snow

It is going to take a long time for snow to melt, and nothing will be possible in the garden until May. In the meantime, all my family in the UK were out planting and posting photos online. Below is a photo of the greenhouse that we finished the frame on. We won’t be planting anything this month:

Building the Workbench

The main work this month was taking place indoors. I was really short on tools to deal with unexpected problems but I’d glued together the parts for the workbench. the wood had bent a bit as it acclimatised and I didn’t yet have enough clamps to fix that. I put multiple threaded bars through the work surface and tightened them. Even that was tricky as I didn’t have a drill that would reach all the way through and getting a drill handle at a perfect 90 degrees was difficult.

Once the surface was made and glued I drilled it. I then used hand planes to plane it flat. The vices took a long time to arrive. The first vice I ordered somehow went from Germany to England by mistake. I have no idea how. I couldn’t find any circular dowel to tap the legs in place with.

Bridge Assessment

The wooden bridge over the stream had a bit of a bend on it. One of this years projects would be to reinforce the bridge. If it collapsed it would be expensive and awkward to replace. More importantly, I don’t want anyone getting hurt.