Winnipeg

Leo A. Martin leo@possi.org
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 20:35:07 PDT
Dell wrote

> Well, Leo, it looks like you finally bought that fishing lodge that you always wanted
> at the north end of Lake Winnipeg. Congratulations! If you ever need a taste of the
> tropics while you are there, the botanical gardens at Flin Flon are not that far. ?

Moving my collection this time of year was interesting, to say the least. But an
engineer friend performed some complex non-linear airflow calculations on his work
supercomputer and we discovered that attaching tens of thousands of simple
picture-hanging brads to the exterior metal shell of an aluminum rental trailer would,
at the speeds I drive, generate enough drag to heat the trailer interior to something
above freezing, allowing my collection to survive the move without further heat. I did
have a backup USB trailer heater attached to my mobile phone just in case. I have
installed on my mobile phone an app that converts the camera into solar-powered battery
charger and A/C electric source, and it functions well sitting on the dashboard on sunny
days. I have the Android system on my phone; I suspect a similar app is available for
iOS and Windows Phone, but probably not Blackberry OS.

Thinking a little further, we realized we could take advantage of the Winnipeg winds to
heat my greenhouse by removing the brads from the trailer and welding them to the
aluminum frame of my new greenhouse. The greenhouse generates almost too much heat when
the wind is blowing. For times when the wind stops, I use a generator operating on the
heat differential between the air inside the greenhouse and outside to power an enormous
windmill pointing at the greenhouse, whose wind heats the brads and keeps the whole
thing going.

I have a mystery Moraea to add to the Wiki as well, though it may be a few days. I
thought the container held M. tortilis but the flower is yellow, so I wonder whether
this is actually M. deserticola.

Leo Martin
Winnipeg Manitoba Canada




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