When we were painting the front door to our garage I discovered that the frame for our street number used to have a tiny little light in it to illuminate the number at night but it had long since rusted to the socket.  This weekend I set out to replace that light.

I’ve been relearning how to play with electronics for the last few weeks and so I set out to build an automatic LED light that would fit in the existing hole.  Here’s what I eventually put together:

I wired in both white and blue LEDs with a switch to select between them (I included blue since both the doorbell and porch light are blue).  The lights are controlled by a photo-resistor so that they will come on automatically after dark.  After soldering everything together I put it all in an Altoids tin I had lying around.

Its currently just sitting in its eventual resting space, I still need to screw it in and properly hide the power cord, but it’s working:

We’ll be starting our own personal greening a bit sooner.  This Sunday we are waking up way too early and planing a tree with the Friends of the Urban Forest (FuF) in front of our house. We are getting a flowering leaf plum; my parents have one in their backyard that I used to climb up and read in.  

Our backyard is soon to have trees as well.  We’ve already picked up our burgundy plum from the nursery and our persian mulberry came in while we were in Tuscon visiting my brother and his family.  As soon as we get an non-rainy day we’ll be putting them in the ground.

And then there is future possibilities that I’m super excited about – FuF has a program that greens sidewalks. I talked to one of their arborists yesterday and she thinks we can get permitted not only for a patch of green on the street side of the sidewalk but also for a little “front yard” directly touching our house.  I am thrilled.  Even subsidized it won’t be cheap (the permitting fees themselves are hundreds of dollars) but it will be worth it.