March 1st

I owe you one. Spent the day picking up parts for the electric tractors. Had to buy gasoline to complete the trip. On the plus side, it's the first time I have bought gasoline since December 11 last year, and the parts mean our zero-emissions electric tractors will be available to do more work.

March 2nd

I owe you another one. Spent the day today chipping ice and doing an upgrade on one of the electric tractors.

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Today, I planted my garden - sort of. For those of you living in tropical climes, that may not seem very impressive. However, here there is about a metre of snow on the ground, 2 metres on the snowbanks. That would give a new meaning to iceberg lettuce. However, yesterday I received a new Aerogarden. So, I have planted 3 heirloom cherry tomato plants and 3 of 6 herbs which came with the unit.

Set-up was easy. No soil required, and importantly for me - no window access required either. Grow lighting is supplied by an array of LEDs, the growing system is essentially hydroponic (with a minor hybrid tweak for the plant cones. Anyway, all seems to work as advertised. And now we wait for germination.

March 15th

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March 18th

I got a little busy, and have not had a look at the Aerogarden since I set it up. Lo, and behold - 2 of the 3 tomato plant pods have sprouted. Water topped up. Now, I'm off to ignore it again for a few days.

March 19th

Yesterday, the Canadian federal government delivered their budget for the 2019-2020 fiscal year. At 464 pages, it's a bit of a slog. However, there are a few items that might be worth considering. There are about 11 pages related to climate change initiatives, but they're a bit on the fluffy side, do there's not a lot of meat in this area. Still, they have hit a few high profile items, some of which mark dramatic turns in past federal policy and action (more accurately, lack thereof). I'll cover those in a bit more detail in the next few days as some items require some additional fleshing out. It's always a concern when a major financial document uses the phrase: "Program details to follow." But the math says they're looking to boost sales of "zero-emission vehicles" (battery-electric or hydrogen fuel cell - plug-in hybrids and hydrogen combustion are not mentioned) by about 20,000 units a year for three years, starting sometime after April 1 2019. Let's be charitable and colour that as not overly ambitious.

If you want to get a head start, open https://www.budget.gc.ca/2019/docs/plan/budget-2019-en.pdf and head for page 81 (internal numbering - pg 83 of the PDF document).

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