Solar Christmas lights: Lessons learned

Back before Christmas 2013, I thought it would be nice to have some twinkle lights on a little spruce tree that was some distance from the house.  The lights are powered by electricity, of course, so we had a 100 ft. cord running out to this tree all winter, deep under the snow. We plugged and unplugged it every day from an outlet on the house.  But the tree looked nice out there off on the side of our yard.

Then last summer I was thinking about it and wondered about whether you could buy solar Christmas twinkle lights.  A quick check on Amazon.com and there they were!  I bought three sets of them, got them connected up, charged them up by the sun, and waited until decorating time in December.  December came and I put one string up and that night when they came on, I realized that one string looked pretty lame.  But that was okay because I had two more to add.

One little tree with one little string of lights - notice the black solar panel on the ground to the left of the tree.

But I didn't add them fast enough and then December 7th and our first big snow arrived.  I looked out toward the tree one night and it was dark!  The solar panel that needs to see the sun was buried under all the snow.  And that's where it stayed all winter...

...until this past Tuesday night when we came home from our meeting about 8:30pm.  Our little tree was twinkling merrily, all ready for the season!

Next year?  That little solar panel is going to be positioned HIGH up on the tree in full view of the sun.

(That picture is so dreary, dreary, dreary, just like this rainy, sleety day we had today.  Maybe more snow tonight.  Crazy!)