Guy with a Mohawk
Day I-don’t-know-what of mostly continual rain. That is not a complaint, it’s been so dry until this rainy spell started that the garden - what I’d managed to plant – wasn’t growing; now that stuff is growing but I can’t get the rest of it planted. And it was so very dry before the rain, that even after these many days of rain, the ground’s still dry 2 inches down. Keep raining, weather gods!
I’ve been trying to plant between showers, but today it’s showering just about every 30 minutes, which isn’t long enough to be productive. All I’ve managed to do (besides get my feet soaking wet and collect more bug bites) is plant some Thai basil seed in a pot on the porch, and take the cloches off the squashes and cuke and pumpkins, because those seeds aren’t getting any of the rain. In one foray out, I discovered that something cut off one of my tomato plants, which I got in the ground 3 days ago between storms (and at the same time got myself covered with itchy black fly and mosquito bites, all over my body); and discovered that the gremlins are digging up, but not eating, the cranberry beans I also planted that day, much like they dug up the fava beans last year. At least the cranberry beans are too newly planted to have sprouted yet. I’ve now erected around them, and the pumpkin seeds I planted in the same bed, a gremlin-confusing structure of old window screen, small lawn ornaments, unfolded tomato cage, and sticks and empty flower pots that I hope will muddle that spot in the gremlin’s mind so they leave it alone. It worked on the onion bed and Rasta Furian.
We’ve had loads of excitement here in the past two weeks. On Wednesday last, there was an earthquake centered next town over, at 6 am – 2.2 on the Richter scale. A few early risers were aware of it; I’m told it was more noise than shake. If my sleepy brain did register it, I would have assumed it was just a pulp truck trundling by on its way to the wood processing plant up the road.
Then on Friday last, day of many, many thunder-boomers, we had a close lightning strike. The Husband and the cats (I wasn’t home, not sure if I’m glad or sorry to have missed the experience) dove for cover – it seemed to have landed on our garage, which isn’t far from the house – like, maybe 15 feet or so. When they decided they weren’t being attacked, The Husband went out to see if the garage, which has his photo studio on the 2nd floor (as well as a bird’s nest in the stairwell) was on fire. It wasn’t.
However, next day we had no water. The lightning strike fried our well pump. The well is just in front of the door to the garage stairwell.
Our next-door neighbors thought the bolt landed in their backyard – they lost their tv. Wherever it landed, it was plenty close enough. But as my father used to say (when he was teaching me to drive) “an inch is as good as a mile.”
Well – kinda.
The only other times we’ve been without water have been in the winter, when there’s snow to melt on the woodstove for toilet flushing, and we’re rarely out of power for more than a few hours or, at most, a few days. The Husband and I have found that our brains are wired for winter outages – if we have no water, the brains say, then we must not have electricity, so don’t open the frig or freezers, don’t bother flipping on light switches… it’s a strange phenomenon.
Spring Iris
I’m glad it’s not winter because opening the well and pulling out the dead pump, replacing it with a new one, and then flushing the system of the sludge that process coughs up, for several days, and hauling water, would be a lot less fun in winter. It isn’t fun this time of year, either. The ponds are full of frogs and tadpoles, so water has to come from elsewhere.
We’re still hauling drinking/cooking/toothbrushing/washing water, 6 days later, though we can use the slimey well water for toilet flushing, though it’s turned the toilets an interesting shade of black. And The Husband has to keep draining the water tank in the cellar so that the sludgy water gets flushed out sooner and doesn’t ruin the hot water system or house water pipes. Showers have been something we get at friends’ and relatives’ houses, when we go fetch drinking water; and until the well was fixed, The Husband made many trips to the neighbor’s outdoor hose across the field to fill many buckets, which he toted in the wheelbarrow, for toilet flushing –trips he made in the rain. Irony. Remember “water, water everywhere, and nary a drop to drink”? Yup. That’s us this week.
Dish washing takes place with a tea kettle full of nearly-boiling water we’ve hauled from friend’s houses, tempered with cold potable water so we don’t burn our fingers off, and it’s slow and a pain in the butt, and not totally effective, unless we limit ourselves to sandwiches. Or eggs fried in cast iron – we (that’s the old-timer’s “we”) don’t wash cast iron, we wipe it out so it doesn’t rust. The compost bins are getting a good feed on paper towels covered in various oils, cheese and peanut butter smears, and so on, this week. I was never so happy to go to work as I was this week, so I could easily wash my hands and face in hot water!
The cats have spent most of the last week abed – smart thinking. I did find Rasta Furian perched in the dry end of the wheelbarrow earlier today, though. He’s been using it, pre-showery days, as a nice napping place. He was a little surprised when he hopped in today!
It is possible to make soup and bread in spite of the circumstances. But The Husband, who’s been trying to sauter something or other in the cellar having to do with water pipes all afternoon, just muttered something incomprehensible about needing to put bread into the pipe he’s working on.
I don’t think I want to know.
For the blog, 8 June 2023: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com
Photos Deb Marshall
In the garden, looking for trouble. Garlic in the background to the right.
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