Lilacs & Minkes & Plumbing (Oh My)

The subjects today should probably be dealt with over at least 2 posts, but I’m going to cram them into 1. After all it covers just the past 24 hours.

Stanley arrived early yesterday and asked me if I wanted to do the plumbing project. Hell yes! Remember, the water from the pump is really dirty, and the pipes are full of grit, and the water pressure sucks because there’s dirt in all the connections.

Now in my naiveté I thought we would put a new filter on the pump, flush all the pipes, and clean the connection points on the sinks and washing machine.  Ha!

What we actually did was replace the filter, and replace ALL THE PIPES, and clean the connections.

Some highlights:

• I made 5 trips to the Hardware Store in Lubec. That’s 5 trips through both the American and Canadian border crossings. The various officials at both crossings took an amused interest in the project’s progress.
• When I went to buy the replacement filter I discovered that what was installed on my pump was just the housing for a filter. There was no actual filter in it. That explains a lot.
• I cleaned the basement while Stanley did the manly stuff. 8 garbage bags later and you can see the dirty floor. When I took the bags out I discovered, under the lid of the garbage bin, one lone wasp diligently building a nest. While I admired his enthusiasm, it didn’t end well for him.
• I saw an animal crossing the road on one of my trips south and thought it looked like a really odd raccoon. Then I realized I was within 6 feet of my first porcupine. Cute little bugger.

• Somebody at some point decided to hang a baseboard heater from the ceiling of the basement. Mounted on a fixed wooden frame, the metal bottom (and sharp edge) hangs about 5 feet off the floor.
• I can now testify that head wounds bleed a lot. One hour later, Stanley could testify the same.
• The metal pipes are gone now. I have pretty blue and red flexible tubing. I have great water pressure and clean water. The new filter went from white to brown very quickly. I bought replacements as well – I’ll need them.
• I managed to wash the floors upstairs before I collapsed. When you combine water pipes and dirty basements you get mud.

I went out last evening to take a shot of the now blooming lilac and realized that I haven’t mentioned the hedges. Lilac hedges. They surround me and there are hundreds of feet of them. The blooms are now open enough that at dusk the air was full of beautiful scent. It’s extraordinary.

I went out again this morning at 6:30 just to get a couple more shots for this post – I wasn’t going to make you look at all of the old plumbing.

Just off the point in the earlier landscape photo up above I saw movement in the water. The minke whale was crossing outside my cove. I lined up a shot so I’d get a picture when s/he surfaced, but s/he didn’t. The Wendy Ann decided to pick that particular moment to cross his/her path.

Trust me – you see that boat? There was a whale there. He or she will be back – in the meantime, I didn’t have a nap yesterday. I’m going to go make up for that now. 🙂