Rural Dreams

Water Feature

Soon after we moved into this house, we were having an after dinner conversation with friends about landscaping our yard. It was all I wanted to talk about at that time. I was listing the things that I wanted or needed in the yard: a sandbox, a clothesline, a chicken coop, a vegetable garden. Our friend David said we should have a water feature. David has a British accent and I thought I was misunderstanding him at first.

What he meant was a pond or fountain or something, but there are so many practical needs that are going unfulfilled due to money and time constraints. A water feature? Hilarious.

This happened in the winter. When spring came, we discovered that a quarter mile of road runoff drains directly into our yard and sits there until the ground soaks it up. It's never been a huge problem for us, we just see it as our occasional, hassle free water feature.

On Monday night, after eight inches of rain and snow melt, Steve noticed a trickle of water in the basement. We know that the basement gets some moisture, so he wasn't too concerned. Tuesday we awoke in the horror movie, Invasion of the Water Feature.

Our boiler is up on two sets of cinder blocks. The washer and dryer is up on one. The water was up to the top of the first level of cinder blocks when we awoke. Steve rushed out to the hardware store at 7:30AM and got a pump. We plugged it in and the watched the water continue to rise.

David (who named the water feature) brought another stronger pump. We are blessed to have wonderful friends, David had his own things to do that day, being a farmer who also happens to be moving this week. He ended up spending the whole day here because the water continued to rise.

David had a gas powered irrigation pump at the farm he rents half an hour away. He and Steve went and fetched it and some items to repair the built in sump pump. By the end of the day they had four pumps going.

The gas one made the difference - it was the most powerful, but noisy and required refueling every two hours. Steve stayed up til 2AM and then fell asleep. When we woke at 7AM, the water was higher than ever and one of our shelving units had collapsed. Everything on it was floating around in the water. The water had reached the bottom of the boiler and the dryer.

We started the gas pump up again and Steve called the fire department. A fireman came in a pickup truck and pretty much said he couldn't do anything we weren't already doing.

We've been identifying birds visiting a new bird feeder and Aidan asked us about one he had never seen before. I went to the window to find a dove there. We had a good laugh and explained its significance to Aidan.

Steve had to go to work, he had missed two days already this week, so I manned the pump all day, gassing it up every two hours. Until about 3:00, the water level in the yard continued to rise. After that, I was excited to see water marks on the trees that indicated that the water was receeding. We took turns filling the gas pump every two hours through the night.

Yesterday, I was able to turn the gas pump off by the end of the day. In the middle of the night I unplugged the two electric pumps. Today we just had the sump pump going. That one is now turning on and off on its own as the water rises slowly. The water is gone from our yard, but it's clear that the water table is still very high. Weather.com has the following warning:

Tracking

We got a Crinkleroot tracking book from the library and went tracking around the yard.

We don't know what this is but first it looked like a long foot and then we realized that each long foot was probably two small feet next to each other. These prints went across the yard to the road.

Mouse.

Mouse tracks along the edge of a step into the garage. There were no tracks actually going into the garage. Probably some predator living in there.

Mystery tracks of a compost marauder.

Human child, snowboots too big.

Bunny.

Radio IDs

We visited the new studios for WBCR in Great Barrington yesterday and made the following station IDs. Enjoy!

Banana Radio

Babies Laugh

Dog Radio

Public Pain

Last summer I heard about a child who had died in the area. She had had a terrible accident, the kind of thing that parents try to be careful about, but it happens anyway. When I have heard the story, parents note that it could have happened to any of our kids. That the only prevention would be never ever ever taking your eyes off of your child.

Last week I took my car in to get inspected. I took Will but left Aidan with a friend. As I sat in the waiting room, I marvelled at how everyone knew everyone else: the employees knew the customers and the customers knew each other.

When I got back to get Aidan, I mentioned that it was hard to wait in the waiting room with Will for so long. My friend told me that there used to be toys arond there that made the wait easier with kids but that the owners' daughter had died last summer and the toys have since disappeared. She had this horrible accident...

So the story is bigger than a sad accident. The family is out in the public. They fix everybody's cars in town. They tow cars. They help people when they get stuck, stranded. I'd bet more people know them than the mayor.

There's no hiding, no working things out privately. Their door has an open sign on it and anybody can come in all day and either poke at their pain with a prodding finger or drape them in their love and affection.

Some Google Juju

Just some links to help out some websites like my friend Will McGreal also known as William McGreal. And another for Family Resource Centers of Columbia County, formerly known as Family Survival. And one last one for WBCR, Great Barrington community radio.

Who says I can't spam my own site?