How Dry I Am

 

Well that's an unattractive picture to start out with! We are in the midst of a drought, which I think snuck up on us. Two weeks ago, our gardens looked pretty great... and then wowser! Everything is shriveled, crackling and dying. 

Bob and I were merrily watering away, keeping plants happy until one morning while I washed dishes and Bob watered the vegetable garden, our water pressure dropped rather alarmingly. We realized that with no rain at all in the forecast and how luxuriously we'd been watering the various containers and shrubs and vegetables all while doing laundry and taking showers the well's water level had probably fallen to new lows. You get the picture: suddenly we realized that we'd better be frugal for a few weeks. 

Things I've never seen wilt are wilting, like the Eupatorium above. We've been saving rinse water from doing dishes and Bob's been schlepping bucketfuls of water from our stream (also low) but it's no substitute for lavish watering or a day of rain. Forget the lawn: it crunches under foot. That I can live with as it's only temporarily dormant. But I feel awful about all those tender little seedlings that we started indoors- only to consign them to the eternal flames of hell. Gotta love Climate Change, right? at least we're not on fire. Yet.

So I just did an even stupider thing. The deer who are usually pretty well-behaved around her, actually consumed some of my daylily buds yesterday. (Ironically, of course, the daylilies were among the few plants that didn't seem to mind the heat and dryness.) So I announced my intention to spray the shade area with our homemade deer spray. I gloved up as it does smell pretty rank and proceeded to a through dousing of all likely deer delicacies- rhododendrons, daylilies, hosta, impatiens; I hit them all.

(The Long Border in better days. Notice green lawn.) When I came back into the house, Bob helpfully points out that I hadn't taken the deer spray after all, but the container marked Poison Ivy Killer. (I should learn to read.) Hahahahahaha!! So I went back out and re-sprayed with deer repellent, thinking maybe it'll dilute the poison ivy spray.  It's actually a mix of salt and vinegar and takes a few applications to actually kill the poison ivy but with my luck, it will kill all my plants in one shot as they're already weakened by the dry weather. 

So... Goodbye Garden 2022!!

A Job "Well" Done

Or is that "All's Well That Ends Well"? Either way, the new pump works and we have water. I couldn't be happier...
On Tuesday afternoon, after the mayhem of Sandy the SuperStorm had blown by, the Pump Crew reconvened and the new pump (see above photo) was connected and ready to be sent back down, all 250 plus feet into obscurity. You spend hundreds of dollars for a part that you'll hopefully never see again... Not like conspicuous consumption!
Anyway, feeding the pipe back down was easier as you're not hauling the pump up, but the pipe had to be cleaned so that the well isn't contaminated with leaves and boogers and junk. Dumping a bottle of chlorine in helps, too.

That's Bob laughing at my attempts at "photo ops". I was yelling from my position as caboose to "hold the line" as I ran into the house to get the camera. But this picture does give some sense of scale. This is a good 7/8 of the way through the threading the pipe back down. Fortunately, no disaster like kinking pipe or frayed wiring occurred.
About an hour later, after refilling the tank with air and testing, we had water. It smelled like chlorine and I can't say I'd drink it or cook with it yet, but flushing the toilet was sheer joy.

What to do in Event of a Hurricane

There we are (I'm on photos) preparing to hoist the pump approximately 250 feet out of the ground. The day is stormy but not totally woolly yet; winds picking up with light rain. More blustery than actual hurricane.
Time is certainly of the essence as our power is still on and there's not much sense in fixing the pump if we can't even test to see if it works!

Here's a small section of what the pipe looks like. We hauled and hauled and I was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down the end of our driveway, lugging the very end. Bob and Joe were closer to the well head and Andy pulled the pump up from the ground. The pipe is only like three inches around but over 260 feet long with several wires running down to the pump. How this stuff works to bring us water is beyond me!

Here's Joe in the carport (my future studio) cleaning out the pump housing. The pump is indeed shot- it's old and tired! But as luck would have it, Andy called the plumbing supply place and they were just closing. But the highway was being closed, too, so we would never have gotten there in time anyway. 

We're on track to complete the project today as the weather has held off, Sandy seems to have spun herself away from us and there are actually patches of blue sky!

A Big Fat Milestone

This is officially my 200th blog posting. How can that be? A milestone! A blog that began on a whim- to document Bob and I on our householding/homemaking adventure- and here I am creating my 200th posting!
The bridge above, which spans our little stream, seems an apt metaphor for the crossing of so many bridges in this going-on-two-year journey. It has been such a great time!
But I will admit that today erupted with less than stellar events. First, Bob and I woke even earlier than usual as we were really hungry. We'd attended an opening last night (good show!) and never really ate dinner; just picked at appetizers. So we had coffee at 5:00 am and when I took Jules out, it was 6:00 and still totally dark. I turned on the back light and crossed the yard to talk to Crisco the Stallion, who always greets Jules and I.
But then I realized the yard smelled truly awful, like a chemical dump had occurred on the nearby highway.  I saw Jules rolling and Hey Presto! he had been sprayed by an accommodating skunk. Oh hell!!
I bathed Jules as best I could in tomato juice that Bob had whirred in the blender and then hosed him off. (Jules, not Bob). But by now, the whole house and Bob and I smelled less than sweetly. I guess I'd never smelled brand spanking new skunk spray, as it has a different note than the regular octane. The good news is that after a few minutes of being surrounded by the odor, you kind of don't notice any more. But if you
go away and come back, you just can't miss it... Bob went to help a friend batten down the hatches in preparation for our annual October Weather Event and our friend Joe assured Bob he did indeed
smell ripely.
And then, what with the already frenzied frenzy that has been whipped up around the arrival of Hurricane Sandy ( united in unholy union with not one but TWO other weather patterns), I'm feeling jittery and stinky and I finish washing the dishes and go to fill a bucket to sponge mop the kitchen floor (thinking to make the house smell more wholesome) and there's suddenly no water.
Of course, I first suspect power outage as our kindly utility has sponsored robo-calls to pre-announce wide spread power failures, in advance of the storm but it dawns on me that the lights still on. So a friend confirms later in the day that the pump on our well has blown. Perfect timing!
Tomorrow, in the face of 75 mile an hour wind and torrential rain the pump is due to be hauled out of the well head and replaced by heroic heroes (me included). Anyone care to join us for fun and games?

And yet the stream looked lovely today. Peaceful and serene and awaiting true havoc and chaos in the form of Storm Sandy.

Another lovely microvision to leave you with, before all hell breaks out in the morning...