When is an A-Rated Appliance Not?

When is an A-rated appliance not an A-rated appliance? When it only last 2 years before irreparably breaking down. Five years ago we bought a White Knight A-rated tumble dryer. As far as I know it was and still is the only A-rated dryer available. We really liked it. It has some nifty features like reverse tumble - it changes the direction it tumbles every few minutes, so your clothes don't end up in a tight sausage, bone dry and hot on the outside and wet in the middle. It has a sensor, so it goes until the clothes are dry then it stops automatically. I used this feature to test the tumble dryer balls a couple of years ago. You can set it to full-eco-mode where it takes all day to get your clothes dry but uses very little energy in doing so (this is the A-rated mode), or you can set it to murder-death-kill-mode where it blasts your clothes dry in an hour or so. But even in this mode it seems very gentle and I have stopped being fussy about what I tumble-dry and what I air-dry because nothing has ever shrunk in this dryer.

But just over two-and-a-half years after we bought it the drum ripped clean off the bearing leaving a huge ragged hole in the back of the drum. We inquired about getting a replacement drum but it was totally uneconomical - it cost more to do this than to buy a whole new appliance. So we bought another identical dryer. After all, we liked the model very much. Maybe it was a freak manufacturing fault which made it fail so quickly. But just in case it wasn't, we took out the optional 5-year-warranty.

It is more "green" to replace a part than to replace the whole appliance

We're very glad we did, because 2 years and 1 month after we bought it, the exact same fault happened again. And this time the warranty-people have ordered a replacement drum. I don't know why it is economical for them to do it when it wasn't economical for us, but hey-ho. I feel a bit ambivalent about this. It is more "green" to replace a part than to replace the whole appliance, so that's nice. But if they had just sent me a cheque to buy a new dryer, I would have avoided this model like the plague. I feel sure the new drum will also fail in another two years - or more likely in about 3 years, when the 5-year-warranty has expired.

How much energy have I saved by using an A-rated appliance compared to another appliance? I don't know. it depends on exactly how often I have used it, which varies from season to season. And it depends on how much I have used it on A-rated mode and how often I used it on regular mode, which also varies. I put slow-mode on when Ed is at work all day and I just tune-out the sound of the endless rumbling. But in the evenings and at weekends when Ed and the kids are at home I put it on fast-mode. There is enough noise in the house at those times without adding to it.

the embedded energy of the appliance

But how much energy is there in the extraction and processing of the materials that made the appliance? How much energy was used in its manufacture and transport? This is the embedded energy of the appliance. Think of it like the cost of owning a car - if a car is very cheap to run, then that's nice. But if it is very expensive to buy in the first place then that weighs against the cheapness of running. Maybe it still works out cheaper overall, as long as you keep the car on the road long enough. But if you buy an expensive car that breaks down after two years, then it's always going to be uneconomical compared to a car that lasts a long time. I don't think the White Knight dryer deserves to call itself A-rated if it only lasts two years, because I suspect the embedded energy outweighs the energy savings in use.

it is better to dry clothes on the line, and I do this when I can

P.S. yes, it is better to dry clothes on the line, and I do this when I can. But it has rained in England almost without let-up for the last two years. OK that's not strictly true, but it feels true. We have certainly had an unusually wet period for two years now. So line drying has been difficult, and I find a dryer is an essential emergency back-up when every surface in the house is covered in wet clothes and the kids need clean school uniforms by the morning.

Little Black Flies on Houseplants

Do you ever get those nasty little black flies on your houseplants? Clouds of the buggers fly up whenever you disturb the plant. They're really gross.

They're called sciarid flies, fungus gnats or mushroom flies. And you've only yourself to blame; they eat rotting vegetable matter, such as the rotting roots of your chronically over-watered houseplants. The flies don't do any damage to your plant. If an infected plant dies it's usually from the over-watering that attracted the gnats in the first place. The flies are the symptom, not the cause.

Fortunately, the treatment is simple and completely organic. First of all let the poor old plant dry out. It won't harm the plant to do this, in fact it will probably do it a power of good. But mainly you're trying to disrupt the gnats' life cycle. The eggs take about a week to hatch, so if you can keep the soil dry for a couple of weeks you should be able to kill the already-hatched larvae by desiccating them, any larvae that hatch from the eggs after a week will also desiccate, and the adults will have no rotting roots to feed on so they should die too. So you can see that two weeks of dryness should sort the problem out.

If you feel you need an extra line of attack you could get some sticky yellow traps from your garden centre. I don't think they have a proprietary name, just ask for "sticky yellow fly traps for houseplants". These attract the flies - apparently it's the yellow colour that attracts them, not any chemical or scent or anything. And the stickiness is just glue that sticks the flies down and traps them - there's no pesticide in the traps. So this is an organic approach that should help get rid of the nasty little blighters.

Once you've eliminated the flies you might want to put a physical barrier on top of the soil to deter them coming back. An inch-thick layer of sand or fine gravel will prevent females from laying their eggs in the soil.

Finally - STOP OVER-WATERING YOUR POOR PLANTS! Always feel the soil before you water them and if the soil is moist then don't add any more water. Don't let the plant sit in a saucer full of water all day, or worse still for days and days. If there is water in the saucer half an hour after watering, pour it away. Different plants need different watering regimes, so don't water all your plants at the same time. If your moisture-loving Boston fern is looking crinkly round the edges then give it a drink, but you shouldn't water your drought-tolerant Easter cactus at the same time every time. Plants in great big pots need less frequent watering than plants in little pots, although obviously they need more water each time.

Good luck with the sciarid flies, if you have them. And if you don't, give yourself a pat on the back for not over-watering your plants.

Eco Paints

Steph and I went to Homebase today and we spotted a range of eco paints by earthBorn. earthBorn paints are environmentally friendlier because they're VOC free. VOCs are volatile organic compounds - they're the nasties in paint and other things such as paint strippers. They're also what makes new carpets stink, and other plastic things like that. Sick Building Syndrome is thought to be caused by VOCs in paint and carpets etc. They're unpleasant pollutants in the air and water, but confusingly they're also emitted in large quantities by trees, which is why Ronald Regan once said:

Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.

The Great Smoky Mountains in the Appalachians are so called because of the VOCs released by trees in the area, causing a persistent orange smog. To put it into perspective, though, trees also absorb carbon dioxide and give out oxygen, so overall they do more good than harm. The same is probably not true of automobiles or emulsion paint. So if it's possible to make paint without the VOCs it sounds like a good thing to me.

I was surprised to find eco paints in a big DIY chain like Homebase. I thought I'd have to order them off the internet, or maybe drive miles to some small retailer off the beaten track. Next time Stephanie talks me into redecorating a room, we'll head to Homebase and look at the earthBorn paints. I still want to do more research about eco paints and VOCs, but this is a start.

Decorating

My sister, Stephanie, is here for a nice long two-week visit. We've plans to meet up a few times with our other sister, Lindsey, for music and fun. I want us to do some work together on the allotment. And she's persuaded me to redecorate the living room which we haven't changed since we moved in five years ago.

She got here last night and by half-past-eight this morning we'd already been to B&Q to buy plants and paint testers. Now it's half-past-one in the afternoon, and we've slapped little squares of paint on several walls, stripped the chimney breast, started to wallpaper it and then decided we hated the paper, so we've stopped for a pot of tea and to think up a plan B. Plan B so far is "paint it pink".

She's also got grand plans to mosaic the hearth to complement the fireplace we made from smashed-up crockery. I want to plant some hanging baskets and pots to brighten up the front door, and Steph wants to paint the front door red.

Sounds pretty ambitious and exhausting? Add to all that the presence of five kids between the ages of four and ten, and it becomes a totally insane plan. I love it when Steph comes.

A Guide to Cavity Wall Insulation

I wasn't sure whether to include this video as I think it's irritatingly patronising. What do you think?

Annoying videos aside, cavity wall insulation can make a huge impact on your home heating bill and on your carbon footprint. About half the houses in Britain have cavity walls, although if your house is under 25-30 years old it probably had the cavity walls insulated at the same time it was built.

If you live Britain you can contact the Energy Saving Trust who will put you in touch with a local contractor. They will check whether your house already has cavity wall insulation by drilling a small hole in your exterior wall to have a look. They will fill the hole up again when they're done so there is nothing to worry about, and they will carry out the check free of charge. If you don't have cavity wall insulation it's great news in a way, because you can save up to 15% of your home heating bill (abut £90 per year) by getting insulation installed. That's about the same as you can save by having your loft fully insulated - almost as much heat leaves your house through the walls as through the roof.

It costs about £500 to get cavity wall insulation installed. It's a quick and clean procedure. And you should recoup the cost in lower heating bills within about 5 years. There may be grants available, so ask the Energy Saving Trust about grants when you speak to them.

We've already got cavity wall insulation. It was here when we bought the house. But if we didn't I would definitely get it done. It's one of the most important things you can do to save energy, save carbon (about 3/4 of a tonne per year), and save yourself loads of money.

If you get a contractor to come and check whether you have cavity wall insulation, you can tick "I've done one thing on the list!" in the poll in the right-hand-sidebar. If you need to install insulation and you do it, you can tick it again.

Domestic Energy Breakdown

I was very interested in this pie chart which I saw in a BBC editorial about domestic energy use. It says that 84% of UK household energy use goes on space heating and hot water.

Lighting, by comparison, accounts for only 3% of UK household energy use. So whilst switching to low energy lightbulbs is an easy way you can reduce your energy use and your carbon foorprint, it's not going to make a big difference overall. Instead you should focus your energy on savings in space heating and water heating.

What can you do to cut space heating and water heating costs?

• Add to your loft insulation
• Make sure you have cavity wall insulation
• Install double or even triple glazing
• Exclude draughts
• Close curtains when it gets dark.
• Make sure the curtains have thermal lining
• Put foil behind radiators
• Turn off radiators in unused rooms
• Use timers to make sure the heating is only on when it needs to be
• Wear a jumper
• Turn down your heating thermostat
• Lag hot water pipes
• Have showers instead of baths
• Share baths
• Have shorter showers
• Install a low-flow shower head
• Don't use hot water when cold will do
• Turn down your water thermostat (if you always have to add cold water to your bath or washing-up water, then your water thermostat is too high)
• If possible, install a solar hot water system

I can see where I can make improvements in my own household. You can bet that one or more of these will be showing up in March's Bean Sprouts Challenge.

If We Build It, They Will Come

I want a cat, but Ed isn't so sure. Then my friend Guy pointed out that I don't need to get a cat, I just need to get a cat flap. Someone I used to work for believed that there was a cat god who sends cats to people who really need them. So now we have a cat flap. If we build it, they will come.

Pink Dresser

Steph has gone home. Dad is still here for another week and a half. We had loads of fun whilst she was here - yesterday we all went bowling with our other sister Lindsey and her husband Andrew. Then we all had dinner at a pub and had a whale of a time playing the "yes no" game. Then after we put the kids to bed, Steph and I headed out again to a Twelfth Night party thrown by some friends of mine (Hi to Sylvia and Ted if you're reading this!).

Here is a photo of the dresser Ed made to Steph's design, using mostly materials we had in the shed. We had to buy a sheet of hardboard for the back, and some cuphooks (not yet installed) so the whole piece cost us just over £3. I love it enormously and it makes me smile whenever it catches my eye. I needed some shelves to store a few items that tend to clutter up the kitchen. And I knew I wanted it to be a "funky" colour, rather than a "tasteful" colour. It had to be painted rather than woodstained, to hide the fact that some of the shelves are pine, and some are MDF whilst the back is made of hardboard.

Green Cleaning - Results

Steph tested the green cleaning tips I suggested a few days ago. Here's what she found:

It worked better than I expected, and at least as well as I'd expect any off the shelf abrasive cleaner to work. The scrubbing with the lemon and sea salt was very satisfying, and I left the sink covered in the juice for a couple of hours then rinsed it with water. There's still some
ingrained discolouration deep in the pitted plastic, so after tonight's load of washing up, I'll have another go with the lemon & salt & leave it overnight.

The lemony smell was a nice change to Mr Muscle, and far far better than bleach which I'd usually use.

Thanks, now I'm a convert and I'll be picking your brains for more info in the future.

Cartoon from climatecartoons.org. Click on the picture to enlarge.

More About Green Cleaning

The internet has lots of pages of green cleaning tips, but some of them are confused and many of them don't work. For example, some writers get mixed up between baking powder and bicarbonate of soda. Other recipes often recommend that you mix vinegar with bicarb to make a sooper-dooper cleaning agent. Actually that would make a lot of impressive looking bubbles but result in something with approximately the cleaning power of salt water. A basic understanding of chemistry (or baking) would help clear some of this up.

The golden rule is alkali neutralises acid, and vice versa.

• Bicarbonate of soda is a powdered alkali. It's great for cleaning acidic stains. If you mix it with a little water to make a paste, it makes a very gentle scourer. Because the powder is very fine, it won't scratch like salt can.
• Vinegar is a solution of acid. It's good for cleaning alkali stains, and will dissolve greasy stains. I use it in a plant mister for cleaning surfaces, glass etc.
• If you add bicarb to vinegar the alkali neutralises the acid. A lot of carbon dioxide gas is released, and when the reaction is over you are left with a neutral liquid. Well, you probably had a bit too much of one or the other, so it will be a little bit acid or a little bit alkali - but there's no way of knowing which unless you measure precisely and understand the chemistry. Either way, the result has very little cleaning power. If a website or a book advises you to mix bicarb and vinegar, then the writer hasn't tested their own tips. I'd disregard everything else they say.
• Baking powder is a mixture of powdered bicarb and powdered tartaric acid. When dry, nothing happens, but mix them with liquid (e.g. in a cake batter) and they react. Carbon dioxide gas is released - that's what makes your cake rise. The acid neutralises the alkali. Baking powder is no use as a cleaning agent, but it does make great cakes. Again, anyone who recommends you use baking powder as a cleaning agent is confused. Be sceptical about taking their advice.

So that's the lowdown on bicarb and vinegar. They're very useful cleaning agents in their own right, but don't mix them unless you want to make a sink-top volcano for your 5-year-old to play with.

What other options are there for green cleaning?

• Soap is made by reacting a strong alkali with fat or oil. I make soap at home by reacting lye (sodium hydroxide - drain cleaner) with sunflower oil, coconut oil, olive oil etc. A lot of soap nowadays is made with palm oil, and there are all sorts of environmental problems with palm oil production, but that's a story for another day. The point is that soap is pretty environmentally benign and is a great cleaner. After all, it's what your granny used in the days before Cillit Bang.
• Hot water is a great asset to cleaning. Use rubber gloves and very hot water, a bit of soap and you can clean most things.
• Lemon juice is acidic and also a natural bleach, especially in combination with sunlight. But a commenter has pointed out that lemons in Britain have travelled a lot of food miles.

If all the cleaning products you owned were soap, vinegar, bicarb and a pair or rubber gloves, you could still keep your home as clean as you like.

Green Cleaning

Steph phoned me with a cleaning problem - she wanted to know how to remove stains from her plastic kitchen sink without using harmful cleaning chemicals. I suggested that she cut a lemon in half, dip the cut half in salt and use it to scour the stain. The salt has a gentle scrubbing action and the lemon juice ought to bleach the stain away. It might take a few repetitions, depending on how bad the stain is, but it should have some effect.

The trouble is now I have a craving for margueritas.

So Steph, tell us - did it work?

Ed's Shelf

Ed made a shelf above the kitchen window, to store preserves and bottles of sloe gin etc. He did a great job, as always, and the end result is practical and really attractive. Every time I look at it I admire his handiwork, and mine, and get that wonderful smug feeling that comes from having lots of home-made preserves.

From left to right - blackberry vodka, lemon gin, 4 jars of chutney, 2 jars of cherry jam, 1 jar of mincemeat, 2 bottles of damson gin, 1 bottle of lime rum, 7 jars of damson jam and a really dreadful teapot in the shape of a bride and groom, which was a wedding present from an uncle with a mischievous sense of humour.

Smells Like A Brewery In Here...

Steph's here (I know she was just here a fortnight ago but she liked it so much she came back), so we've been busy as usual. Steph instructed Ed to make a shelf to store preserves and things, which he did (I'll show you pictures another time). We made five gallons of tea wine, five gallons of beer (from a kit, I don't know how to make beer from scratch yet but I'd love to learn). We sorted all the stored potatoes out and removed those which had become rotten. Let me tell you, rotten potatoes smell really foul. And we picked about ten pounds of mixed hedgerow fruit - damsons, elderberries, blackberries, sloes, haws and apples - to make 5 gallons of hedgerow wine.

We met our new neighbours, who told us to help ourselves to all the apples, pears, damsons and greengages we want from their garden. Another neighbour provided some empty beer and wine bottles from her recycling bin (we had to do some fancy footwork to explain why we were eyeing up her bin - she initially thought we were accusing her of crimes against recycling, or perhaps of having a drink problem). And we had a gorgeous lamb casserole with our own pink fir apple potatoes and roasted mystery summer squash, and drank lots of beer - well we'll need the bottles to bottle our own beer when it's ready!


Cartoon from climatecartoons.org. Click on the picture to enlarge.

Rag Rug

I made a rag rug out of all my old maternity dresses and the dresses my mum adapted for me so I could breastfeed wearing them (you wouldn't believe how breastfeeding limits your clothing options). I feel I should be able to say something meaningful about the symbolism of that, but I can't. Perhaps it's as simple as this - they weren't any use anymore so I made them into something else instead. This is how I did it.

1. Cut each dress into one long continuous strip. Each strip should be roughly two inches wide, but for heaven's sake, don't measure it - just do it by eye. You might be able to cut all the way around the dress in a long spiral, like peeling an orange. Or you might have to cut in a sort of zig-zag, as in the diagram. When you get to tricky bits like sleeves etc., use your own ingenuity. If you don't have any ingenuity, just buy a damn rug instead. Then roll the strips into balls. This step takes hours and hours. Making rag rugs is not a quick project by any means.


2. If you are a neat freak, you can press your strips so all the ragged edges are hidden. You do this by folding the two raw edges to the centre, then folding in half so the raw edges are enclosed, then press. But I don't mind a raggy look - it is a rag rug after all. If you do press them, this stage will also take hours and hours.


3. Take three strips and stitch them together at the top. Then fasten them to something like a chair and start braiding the strips. When you run out of one colour, or you want to change colour because you're going out of your mind with boredom and you're desperate to break the monotony, sew the new strip to the end of the old strip and continue. Roll the braid up into a ball until you have enough to start stitching the rug. Guess what? This stage takes hours and hours.


4. Coil the braid into a spiral and sew it together with the toughest thread you can find, such as upholstery thread. Work on a flat surface such as a large table or your rug won't lie flat (we didn't do this and had to "block" the finished rug with steam and then stitch it to a hessian backing - if you work on a flat surface these stages will not be necessary). If you have a friend or a sister to work with, one of you can braid whilst the other coils. Funnily enough both stages seem to progress at approximately the same rate. Needless to say, this stage takes hours and hours.

I can't remember exactly when Steph and I started the maternity dress rag rug, but it was about two years ago. We've worked on it in fits and starts, sometimes quite intensively but often putting it away for months on end. I don't know how many hours we spent on it altogether, but it's a lot. This is no weekend project, it's much longer than that, but the end results are worth it.

It's finished now and is on the floor of my bedroom. It looks lovely, and is warm on my feet when I get out of bed. It's also full of memories - memories of my pregnancies, memories of breastfeeding the babies, and memories of working on the rug together with Steph. To me it's better than the finest Persian carpet could ever be.

What's Sprouting

This blog isn't called Bean Sprouts for nothing. I love sprouting dried seeds and beans, and almost always have something sprouting on my kitchen windowsill. At the minute there's some good old mustard-and-cress.

Eleanor helped me prepare this batch, by placing some damp paper (kitchen roll, blotting paper, whatever) in our bean sprouter, but you could use a saucer. Then she sprinkled mustard and cress seeds liberally but evenly on the damp paper. If we keep it moist, in a few days we'll have lovely fresh mustard and cress to eat.

Green Fly Control

Not GREENFLY control, although they're a pest as well. I'm talking about fruitflies, mainly. I left a bag of rhubarb in the kitchen when we went away on holiday and when we got back the kitchen was full of fruitflies. I don't really want to use poison to eliminate them, so instead I got rid of the rhubarb and anywhere else they could live, such as the compost bucket, and hung up flypapers.

If you're not familiar with flypapers, they're incredibly sticky strips that you hang up. As soon as a fly blunders into one, it gets stuck for good. Frankly, they're a bit gross, but they're better than having flies everywhere.

One final thing - under no circumstances allow small children to "help mummy with the dusting" anywhere near them. Last year Sam was playing with my genuine ostrich feather duster and got it tangled with the flypapers. By the time I had cut all the sticky bits off my duster, it was so badly maimed I was forced to do the merciful thing.

Review: You Can Save The Planet

My daughter, Eleanor, has decided that she is an eco-princess after reading You Can Save The Planet by Jacqui Wines. It's a book for children that explains about energy saving, water conservation, pollution, reduce reuse recycle and so on. It focuses on things children can do, or encourage their parents to do.

For example, there is a checklist to see whether the house is energy efficient:

• I have taken a look and our loft is/is not insulated
• I tested each window in our house for drafts by holding a feather in front of it and seeing whether it fluttered. ___ windows had drafts.
• We have ___ lightbulbs in this house. ___ of them are low-energy bulbs.

... and so on. Eleanor has made a poster saying "If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down." and stuck it up in the loo. Lovely.

I had an ulterior motive in buying this book for the kids. Often they thwart my attempts to be green - they can't be bothered to turn lights off, they can't be bothered to separate the recycling, they'd rather take the car than walk or cycle places. When you've got an eco-mum, this is how you rebel, I suppose. But this book makes being green seem like subversive fun. The back of the book says "Your parents' generation have wrecked the planet. Now it's up to you to make them fix it again". It seems to be working, on Eleanor at least. If I want Tom to read it I'll have to slip it inside an Artemis Fowl cover.

How to Make A Mosaic

Steph (not my sister) asked how we made the mosaic fireplace. It's exactly the same process as tiling but much more fun.

1. Prepare the surface by cleaning it and removing any loose material.


2. Smash some old plates, cups, ceramic tiles or whatever into small pieces (it's all fun and games until somebody loses as eye, so do wear safety goggles).


3. Our design was random, but if you want to make a pattern mark it out on the surface before you start.


4. Using a grout spreader, spread readymixed multipurpose grout over part of the area to be tiled. We didn't grout the whole area in case some of it dried out, so we just did a square foot or so at a time. If you're making a pattern, mark it into the grout by dragging the edge of your spreading tool, to make a line so you can see what you're doing. (At this point I should say that grout is very caustic so wear gloves. But we didn't.)
   


5. Press bits of crockery into the grout. Ours slid about a bit but they didn't fall off so we just kept going. Keep the spaces between them about 1/8 - 1/2 inch or so. You need some space to get grout in, but you don't want big white areas.


6. Let your design dry overnight. We found at this stage there were some big lumps of grout sticking up but they rubbed off fairly easily with our fingers after only a day. They'd probably have gone harder if we left them longer.


7. Rub more grout into the spaces between the tiles. Work it in well taking care not to leave air gaps. Rub the grout more-or-less smooth with your fingers, and don't worry about getting it on the surface of your tiles. you can wipe it off in the next step.
   


8. With a moist sponge, wipe over the surface of your mosaic to remove excess grout and smooth the grout lines. Allow the grout to harden overnight, then give it a final clean up with an old toothbrush.

This is known as the direct method of mosaic making, as opposed to the reverse method where you arrange your design back-to-front on a piece of paper and apply it later then soak off the paper.

Bear in mind that the end result is more decorative than practical. You can't make it level and smooth no matter what you do, so it's not really suitable for tables, trays etc. You can't easily clean it because stuff tends to get stuck in the grout recesses so it's not really suitable for bathrooms or kitchens. Suitable projects include house number plaques, garden ornaments, mirror and picture frames, "sculptural forms" etc. Or you could mosaic entire buildings, cathedrals and public parks if you are an insane genius.

Mosaic Fireplace

I said that Steph and I were being creative with old china plates. The cake stand was just the start of it. Our main project has been tiling the fireplace in the living room with a mosaic of smashed crockery.

It was great fun to do and I love the end result. So much nicer than the nondescript brown tiles that were there before. It was also a frugal makeover as Steph found the plates as a job lot and they cost less than new tiles from B&Q would have done.

Steph has gone back home to Sunderland now with my young nephew and niece and I miss them already.

Frog Central

It was dry enough the other day to mow the lawn, but the job was made more complicated by having to avoid the frogs that were all over the place. I really didn't want to slice and dice them so I had to keep my eyes peeled and be ready to do an emergency stop at any time.

I've always known there were frogs, toads and newts in the garden. One year a toad hibernated in our compost heap, and I loved going to have a peek at him. But I've never seen so many of them.