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my father and i took turns this monday mowing the lawn and pruning the evergreen shrubs in front of the house. in the afternoon when he was napping, i reseeded some bare patches on the lawn, watered the garden, and moved all the jasmines and gardenia into the basement grow room since the weather this week will drop down into the lower 40's at nights.

originally i set the led grow light on the top shelf, but discovered the bottom shelf is 2 inches higher, so i ended up moving everything to the bottom shelf instead. 3 potted plants per shelf is a tight squeeze, since we have the room we can put 2 plants per shelf for better circulation and less crowding. the led grow light still needs to be higher, the optional distance between the plant top to led light is 2ft; growing them too close the plants are liable to get burned from too much light exposure and the light doesn't spread as wide when they're hanging so low. i set the timer for the bank of 4 fluorescent lights to 7am to 7pm, 12 hours.

my father and i brought the remaining outdoor plants into the basement grow room, including the aquatic reed and the pair of shedding topiary (ficus?). the room looks more and more like a florist shop, minus the blurple lighting. i set a second wifi enabled timer for the led lights, set to a 7am to 7pm timer like the fluorescent lights.

after seeing our basement setup in its near complete form, my father and i decided we needed to get at least one other led grow light to fill out the space. i'd done the research, and the choice was between traditional led's or ones with reflectors. reflectors produce more PAR but the light is more concentrated and isn't as wide a spread. they're also slightly more expensive. we ended up getting the 1000W iplantop grow light for $69. it features 100 triple-chip led's and has a power consumption of 180W. it's due to arrive on wednesday.

end of the month, time to tally up our solar production for september. it was the 4th highest production for 2019, and the 7th highest overall. september 2019 easily beat september 2018's production, 1036kWh to 742kWh, a difference of almost 300kWh. september started with a lot of ups and downs but by the second half of the month daily production never once dipped below 30kWh. we should still make a production surplus for october, if history repeats itself. once november rolls around though, we will be running a deficit and start using up the energy credit we've saved up this year.

belmont electricity bill came out a few dqys ago: my parents earned $34.03 worth of additional electricity credit, bringing the grand total to $381.87.

i made some late night purchases off of ebay from bed, and noticed that it was collecting taxes on items it normally never collects taxes on (oversea items from china). that got me thinking that maybe today (tonight) - october 1st - was the start of some new tax legislation, and sure enough, i found out that starting today, massachusetts will begin taxing all online items regardless of where it's from. so the days of online tax free loopholes seem to be finally over. it may just be an ebay thing, and if that's the case, i might go elsewhere to my cheap electronic parts, like aliexpress.