More From Last Year

The onions are coming along fine.  Can't tell yet whether having more room is making them happy or not.  They spent a week in the house and now they're back out in the greenhouse.  Sandy loaned us some neat trays that today I will plant with lettuce--hopefully seedling pictures next week.

One of the things that took up lots of time last fall was our water system.  We originally set ourselves up down at Teri's because of the excellent exposure, the fertility of the hog lot, and the gravity fed water system.  The cistern soon didn't work so well and Teri and Monte were kind enough to let us use their well water.  We ran a hose from Gladys' house to the garden; all water came off the one hose.  You couldn't water a whole lot at once, but it worked well enough.

In the fall, it all fell apart.  There had been a leak for a while near Teri's well house.  It got much worse and so Teri dug it up to investigate.  Part of the problem was the line to Gladys' house.  The easiest thing to do was cut it and cap it.  No more water through our usual system.  To get us through, we had hoses running from Teri's well house, but they certainly were in the way.  Luckily, it was getting late in the year and water wasn't so crucial.  

The problem.

Suddenly, it was time to develop a plan for a new water system.  How many spigots?  Where do we want them?  Might we expand?  A decision was made, although perhaps in haste.  The backhoe came and dug trenches--some through plants.

The zucchini payed the highest price for the new water system.

 The new system is a 3" diameter pipe.  Shawn and Teri placed the pipe and glued it all together.  I did my best to seat it--make sure that it was sitting on dirt rather than air and then cover it so that when the backhoe came to fill in it hopefully didn't break the pipe.  We now have at least four places where spigots emerge.  Also, it's remarkably easy to turn off the water and drain the system.  There was, unfortunately, one break that developed, way at the end of the line.  A 3" line can put out a lot of water.  Teri found it and stopped it from getting worse.  Sometime this spring we'll have to fix it.

The pre-seated pipe.

 A couple cool critter pictures, because I like them.

Mr. Toad hung out in front of our house for a while.  Luckily Andy didn't eat him (as far as we know).

This yellowjacket wanted to come in the house.