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Mid-January, Rain - January 13, 2012
Almost Midwinter - December 14, 2011
Saturday, Noonish, Sunny - November 05, 2011
October, White - October 31, 2011
October, 2011 - October 04, 2011


August 29, 2011

7:40 a.m.

Goodnight, Irene

The hurricane came and went, leaving us with some damage and conundrums to sort out. Happily, there was little damage on my property. Rose and Karl have fences and arbors down, but all can be repaired -- and the picket fence and rose arbor needed replacing anyway. The giant, double ash tree we re-cabled on Saturday held up just fine. I had one autumn olive come down that was slated for removal. My big old locust tree shed very few little branches and all the big limbs are fine.

My biggest problems are the pump house for the well and the power line running to it. The electricity is back on in Main Street this morning (amazingly), but there is a fallen tree leaning against the line servicing the well. That's a separate circuit from the house. It's working, but I reported the tree yesterday so am hoping the electric company will come soon and remove it. It leans towards my neighbor's driveway as well as being a hazard to the power lines.

The pump house itself is a bit of a mess. It's a cement chamber, maybe four by five feet, with the pump, the bladder, and all the mechanism for shoving water alllllll the way up the long hill to my house. It was dug down at the street because the former owner was going to build a commercial structure down there with one well that serviced both locations. That's fine, except when it rains heavily, water pours into it from hill runoff (in spite of Karl making something of a diverting ditch around it) and there is a pump that automatically removes the water when it gets a few inches deep. But that pump had no power yesterday, and the whole pump house filled up with about four feet of water and stayed that way until this morning. The big blue tank thing that I believe operates as a pressure bladder (so the pipes won't suffer from all the water pressure when turning it on and off at the house) was free-floating in the structure. Um... it's not supposed to do that. Now it's canted at a sorry angle against the far side. Karl winced when I told him. I'll go over momentarily and see if he can help me sort it out. So I have lights here, but no running water.

Still, it could all have been worse. The power didn't go out until noon yesterday, and in the morning I was able to vacuum 46 gallons of water out of the basement. Today I can recommence. Isn't that convenient?

It was slightly scary, hearing the wind and other unusual sounds, late into the night with no one here to comfort me.

Radar fared a bit worse; a tree came down in his yard and pulled lots of power lines down. They were the only house on the street without electrons. But I'm sure they're on town water, so at least they can flush!

He also had no phone service all day, so we were unable to communicate at all. He finally came over last night to check on me, which I appreciated. I got to meet his doggie at last, a beagle, described as "the happiest dog in the world."

I had my lovely, unexpected cup of coffee this morning; now I go next door to do a couple of dishes, fill a couple of five gallon buckets, and see what I can do to help them clean up debris.


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