Plant World Problems

Plant World has been humming along for a number of winters now, so it didn’t surprise me when one of the bulbs burned out. I meant to replace it right away, but it wasn’t too difficult to arrange the plants from that shelf into other spaces so they could get light, and then I kind of forgot about it. That is, until coming back from our trip to visit Travalon’s friends for New Year’s. Two more bulbs had burned out, and I thought, “OK, now it’s time to get new ones.” So the next day I went to the store and bought three plant light bulbs; I was going to buy four, on the assumption that the remaining one would soon burn out as well, but they only had three in stock at the moment. I brought them home and installed them in Plant World, but they didn’t work, so I did what I always do when confronted with electrical problems: call Richard Bonomo, the electrical engineer. He said I probably just hadn’t gotten the bulbs in completely right, and he came over to try it himself, but they just would not work.

Rich had an answer for that: I needed new ballasts. The problem is that they were unusual parts, and nobody in town carried them, so I was going to order one online to see if it worked. However, the cost for shipping and handling was as much as the ballast, so I decided to buy whole new fixtures. To my surprise, the home supply stores no longer carry any model of light fixture that would be useful for plant lights. The closest one they could show me was for a closet. So I went back to Plan B and ordered the ballasts online – four of them, because that one that still works could fail at any moment, plus it made the shipping charge more cost-effective. It turns out the ballasts only have a three-year warranty, so I shouldn’t be too surprised that they have failed after four years in Plant World. Silly me, thinking I’d only have to replace the bulbs now and then. Who knew light fixtures were so complicated? 

When I complained that my January is not starting out that well, Rich concurred that it is a bad month, because he knows of four people just diagnosed with brain tumors in the last couple of weeks, so then I felt lame for complaining about light fixtures. Trust Rich to put it all in perspective. Still, if the ballasts don’t work, then I really have no idea what to do for my plants. Right now I have them all over the place, with every light blazing all day long in hopes that this will give them enough light to photosynthesize. It’s been too cold to move them to Rich’s house, with its wonderful southern exposure windows. Here’s hoping the new ballasts arrive soon, and that they work…

Famous Hat