It was a weird winter – perfectly predictable that Spring would get it wrong as well. It’s damn near mid-May and I’m still sleeping in a hoodie with the bedroom heater on but that has to be coming to a whoa and even if it isn’t I have to get on with summer stuff.
Ergo…
…the semiannual switching-around-of-the-closet ritual in which all the winter-weight stuff goes into upended garbage bags, because this is the desert and the desert is a dusty place, and what little of the summer-weight stuff that hasn’t already been dragged out one at a time finds its way to the near end of the closet rod.
I’m having to rather painfully rethink my long-standing trouser strategy. Recently a friend of the blog gave me a stack of nice cargo pants so high I won’t live long enough to wear them all out, which means that I really need to put aside “keep your newest BDUs sacrosanct for town until the oldest ones completely fall apart.” This morning I actually found a couple of like-new BDU trous I had put under plastic in Autumn, just to keep them nice, which means I have an embarrassment of pants.
Meanwhile I’m starting to get outdoor stuff lined up: Soon I’ll be wanting to start my hillbilly water heater, which means I need a source of water in the yard. Since I lost my yard faucet early in January there currently isn’t one which means that new no-freeze hydrant needs to be job one. I still haven’t researched exactly how one goes about doing that but I do know I’m going to need some gravel for a drain field. So starting yesterday and finishing up today I’ve brought all my big old buckets out to Ian’s driveway where there still exists a bunch of cinder gravel left over from his leach field installation damn near 20 years ago. A lot of it has sort of migrated into the ground so the first step was to rake it all up and into piles, and Tobie and I spent part of the morning walkie scooping it into the buckets. Later today we’ll bring the Jeep around to cart them home.
And now I need to let Youtube teach me how to install a basic no-freeze hydrant so it doesn’t just fall over. I know it can be done, all my neighbors have had them for years, but I can’t quite visualize it. Then – sigh – I have to dig yet another hole around my plumbing. This one rather deep, but hopefully for the last time.
HA! Congratulation on your embarrassment of pants. Know anybody (else) that’s needy?
I likewise have too many good pants. When the wife finds quality work clothes at a thrift store, super cheap, she gets ’em.
I have been doing the cold, hydrant thing for awhile. The top of yer gravel base is at the depth you want your hydrant, line depth. I put them in with a T bar to clamp to for strength. I just use sched 40, pvc, to a 90* at whatever depth you’re going for. Here in Tennessee, all my yard water plumbing, is at least 12″ deep.
Definitely do the utube thing.
It’s not easy being a weather guesser, you never know what the (((geoengineers))) have schedualled for screwing up crops and fruit trees, or the next weather event.
Frost free yard hydrants are a pretty straight forward project. Digging the hole deep and big enough to work in the bottom of is the work. Here in North Eastern Nevada, at 5000 feet, our water lines are five feet deep. Because ours are so deep we install the best, tippy top of the line, hydrants. Only want to dig that hole once.
Looking at all those hanging clothes, oh my, aren’t you a regular Beau Brummell. 😊 As I have learned, it’s better to have and not need, than need and not have.
It’s a shame that you don’t have access to the old backhoe anymore. That would have made the installation of the no-freeze hydrant a snap.