I would bring up the subject of his dying plants and see what he says. He might not know what is going on and might be eager for your help. A soaker hose would have prevented those plants from dying. Life is so much better being on good terms with your neighbors. I'm surprised you don't know them very well as it is. I trade and sell plants with my neighbors quite frequently. My closest neighbor and I shared the cost and labor of a 650 ft. ranch wire fence topped with barbed wire. It also has a hot wire on the inside to keep his cows and horse from pushing on the fence to get at my plants. (It's always greener on the other side.) Good neighbors have good fences. Mike

kriswrite - you need to boil a lot of the water out of it. It does take a long time. IIRC, I would boil the peels and pits for 3 hours or so. And then it would be another hour or 2 before it would become syrup consistency. I would keep it on more of a low simmer at the beginning of the boiling process - so I could be doing other things. And then when it started getting close, I would turn it up to a full rolling boil and keep my eye on it. if you don't want to use a thermometer, you can test it similar to testing jam - put a bit on a frozen plate and check for thickness that way - you'll never be able to judge thickness when it is hot.

Thanks for the input. This morning was a bust. We wake around 7AM, so I had the therm set to come on at 6AM. Since we're on vacation, we woke just before 8AM, and the temp in the house was just 63! In 2 hours, it only rose 8 freaking degrees! I just switched them back over to adaptive recovery until I figure out my next step. countryboymo - the VisionPro already has an outdoor sensor installed since we have a dual fuel system. I love being able to glance at the therm to see the outdoor temp! zl700 - we've had this new system/therm since early November, but the frigid temps are recent in our area - Tennessee. I'm assuming that if this weather continues, it'll straighten itself out. Unfortunately, our weather is erratic, and although we were down to 15 last night, tonight we're at 50 and a few days ago it was 65. This weather is doing a number on our sinuses. dadoes - we have a dual fuel system with propane for our auxilliary/back up heat. I prefer the feel of gas heat, but when we replaced our system last month, went with the dual fuel to save some money with the heat pump. I would LOVE if my system would use the auxilliary heat to bring temps back up quickly and then switch over the heat pump to maintain during the day, but apparently this can't be done with my current therms. I really, really miss having that warm air in the morning. I'm finding that the air put out by the heat pump is just as cold as I remember from my last house. If propane costs hadn't gone through the roof I would have never gone with a HP and just stuck with straight gas. :(

Look at the Ecobee 4. It should be able to handle that and is the only smart thermostat with individual sensors that you can put throughout your house that has room occupancy indications to determine if anyone is in the room. I love mine.