Our Family Garden Is Finally Planted

With all the activities going on around at our house this summer, I haven't had the time to get our garden planted. We were fortunate that we had a volunteer giant pumpkin come up on its own from last year, which helps out, since they usually take 120 days to produce these giant Prizewinner Pumpkins.

But today I planted the following:

- Celebrity Tomato
- Cherry Tomato
- Cucumber
- Egg Plant
- Giant Bell Pepper
- Cantaloupe/Melon
- Zucchini
- Normal size Pumpkin
- Radishes

It is going to be exciting to see how they do after being planted so late in the season. However, this is Southern California so the growing season is long and I think we should have a bountiful harvest this year.

Along with our new vegetables, we have our existing fruit trees:

- Navel Orange
- Tangelo
- Fuji Apple
- Haas Avocado
- Bacon Avocado

- Apricot
- Lime
- Lemon
- Peach
- Pink Grapefruit
- Two Kumquat trees

And don't forget our berries:

- Boysenberry
- Blue Berry

We have always had a garden in our backyard and it is great to be able to eat fresh fruits and vegetables right from the garden. They taste so much better than the tastless stuff you buy in the stores.

City Violates Its Own Water Conservation Law

This afternoon I was driving down the main street in our town and I happened to notice two sets of sprinklers running. Apparently they had been operating for some time, as the area was soaked and excess water was running down the street into the storm drains.

Now don't get me wrong. It wasn't a river of water large enough to wash away children and pets. No homes were in danger, and nobody was filling sand bags nearby. But when a man floated by in his rowboat I knew we had a problem.

To make matters worse, the state of California is currently in a drought situation. The water supply to Southern California has been drastically reduced to maintain the habitat of the small Delta Smelt fish that live in the Sacramento River Delta. Our city has gone one step further. They have instituted a new city ordinance wherein a citizen can be fined hundreds of dollars for wasting water. It is now against the law to wash off your driveway or to run your lawn sprinklers for more than 15 minutes. It is against the law to water your lawns between the hours of 7am and 5 pm. Showers are limited to 5 minutes. Citizens are even encouraged to report violations in their neighborhoods and to call a special hot-line if they see one of their neighbors wasting water.

Being a good law abiding citizen I was alarmed to see the city watering at 3:45pm in violation of their own ordinance.

My first reaction was to do nothing. After all, it was possible that someone else had already complained to the city. In addition I didn't have the telephone number of the hot-line, anyway. Besides it's not my responsibility to enforce the city's ordinances. Right??

But as I continued down the hill next to the river of wasted water I started to get angry. They city wanted me to report on my neighbors, so why shouldn't I call them for violating their own law?

When I reached my destination I asked for a phone book and quickly looked up the telephone number of the city's 24 hour hot-line.

When I dialed the number on my cell phone, a man answered, "Can I help you?"

I told him about the two sprinkler systems and the water running down the hill into the storm drain. His response was typical of a government employee so it should not have surprised me.

"So what's the problem?" he snapped back at me arrogantly.

"Take a look at your watch, buddy!" I responded. "You guys would fine me a hundred dollars if they were my sprinklers!"

My angry voice and his corresponding vision of me standing there with a pitchfork in one hand and a baseball bat in the other, must have had a calming effect on him, and he answered, "I see what you mean."

He took down the location of the sprinklers and my telephone number, and told me that someone would be dispatched immediately to turn off the water.

About 3 hours later I just happened to drive up that same hill on my way home from Home Depot. To my surprise there was a city truck parked on the side of the road in the river of water. The city employee had just turned off the water and was wading through the river to get to his truck.

I felt good inside.

Not only had I done my civic duty and helped to enforce the law, but I had also saved the Delta Smelt from instinction.

A Big Investment For Only 70 Cents An Hour

The other day a friend of mine installed a series of solar collectors on the roof of his house. There must be about 35 of them up there. And they are on the front side of his house so that everyone can see how nice and dark blue they look. I estimated that he spent nearly $50,000.00 to have them installed.

We have a law in California called the Solar Rights Act which allows you to install solar collectors on your roof just about anywhere you want and nobody can stop you even if it looks bad and lowers the property values of nearby homes. Now, some people might argue that a red tiled roof covered with black or blue solar panels is very attractive and has a sort of high tech appeal. Others might disagree and contend that it looks ugly and detracts from the appearance of the neighborhood. I don't feel strongly one way or the other.

Well, the other day I approached my neighbor and inquired about the performance of his system. After all, it had been running long enough to provide some indication of how much money he was saving.

My neighbor proudly told me that he was "saving lots of money." In fact just the other day he said that he had reached the phenomenal output of 7000 Watts! He explained that while it was just for a moment, it had actually reached that incredible level.

"Hmmmmmmm," I said as I digested this new information. "Let's see now, electricity in our neighborhood in the first tier of our billing schedule is about 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. That means that at the moment you reached 7000 Watts you were producing about 70 cents of electricity per hour."

"Only 70 cents?" my neighbor gulped.

I didn't want to hurt his feelings so I backed off a bit. "Maybe I made a mistake," I suggested. "Let's do the math together. 7000 Watts is 7 kilowatts, right?"

"If you say so," he agreed.

"And 7 times 10 cents is 70 cents, right?" I continued.

"That sounds correct," he mumbled under his breath.

"So at that moment when you reached the peak of 7000 Watts you were making 70 cents per hour, right?"

"You must be right," he said, but then he began to complain, "How come it seems so low? I thought I was going to make much more than that. What is wrong?"

I could see that his vision of making millions of dollars from "free" sunlight was fading, so I figured I would finish him off completely.

"Did you say that 7000 was the peak?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied.

"So the average amount of money you are saving is somewhere between zero and 70 cents per hour. Let's assume it is 35 cents per hour. That's the average of zero and 70," I reasoned out loud.

I continued, "Lets assume that you can collect sunlight for about 6 hours per day. Does that seem reasonable, given the shade from your trees and the fact that you put your panels on the western slope of your roof?"

My neighbor nodded his head, "yes."

"So that figures to be about $2.10 per day," I calculated in my head, as I prepared to deliver the final blow.

"How much did you say you paid for the solar panels including installation?" I asked.

"About $45,000," he gulped again. "But I got a 30% tax rebate from the State of California," he beamed.

"That's good," I responded. "Let's see now, 30% discount means you paid about $30,000. right?"

By now my neighbor had removed his I-Phone from his pocket and was helping me with the calculations.

"More like $31,500," he corrected me.

"Good," I responded, "It is important to be accurate."

I continued, "If we use simple math, and divide $31,500 by our daily rate of $2.10, how many days will it take before you pay for your investment?"

His fingers raced over the chrome plated I-Phone as he performed his accurate calculations. "15,000 days," he responded.

"And how many years is that?" I continued to pressure him.

"A little over 41 years," he quietly responded. "Gee, that's a long time, isn't it?"

"It seems kind of long to me," I said as I watched him sink into deep depression. "But that's just my opinion. And look at it this way, at least you didn't have to wait 41 years to pay for it. You can pay for it right now."

"Yes," he gulped again, "Right now."