There is now a hole in my life when there are no comments in the comments section.  I have managed to generate a few friends by way of this blog and we connect by way of the comments section so, when it goes awry, the friends disappear. And I miss ’em.  I think I fixed it now so all three of you can be in touch again.  Whew! 

Spring is fix-it time.  Things need attention.  Of course, the garden is the most obvious and most alluring attention-seeker but the boats need maintenance, the gutters need cleaning and usually the systems need some attention as well.  And so, spring clean-up is now underway – albeit glacially.

When we first arrived, everything was good.  But a quick inspection revealed that the batteries needed topping up and so did a few terminals need cleaning up.  Water and gas seemed fine so we turned our attentions to other things like cleaning the gutters and addressing some boat chores.  As it turned out, we didn’t notice the dog NOT barking. Translation: our water system operates with a constant stream from the hose in the creek. That constant stream creates a slight water-hose-filling-the-cistern sound in the background.  We know water is flowing simply by listening carefully.  But, of course, we forgot that, and didn’t listen and have now just discovered that the water must have stopped running sometime well in the past.  Our cistern is empty and we are dry.

And this may be a good thing.

We put the cistern in – under the house – at the time of construction.  It is 1100 gallons and the tank is 7 feet in diameter and about four feet in height with a bulge on top that frames an access hatch that is maybe 20 inches in diameter.  A child could slip in through that hole, I could not.  Naturally we placed the access hatch directly under a floor joist so that there is precious little access to the access hatch.  A foot either way and there would have been another twelve inches of entry angle but, as it is, there is only about 12 inches or so now.  Twenty-four would have been good.  Twelve is tough.

Since the house was built we have, naturally, flowed thousands of gallons from the creek through the cistern and into our plumbing system.  As a consequence river-silt has built up on the floor of the cistern.  But the cistern is usually full of water and we need to use that water all the time so we have simply lived with the silt-up.  But we figured that some day we would have to clean it out.  That day seems like NOW.

Sally is less humongous than I am.  So Sally goes into the tank.  IF she can.  Assuming, that with enough Vaseline, we can slip her in, she will be in a four foot high black tank standing in several inches of silt and having to scoop it all up in a bucket which she will pass out to me for dumping in the garden. Light will have to come by way of a headlamp. Clothing will be restricted to a bathing suit.  Claustrophobia will become her friend.  Egress will be more difficult than access and even access is questionable.  I haven’t yet figured out we can get her out from the position she will be in.  She may have to live there.

Well, to be more accurate, I haven’t yet figured out how I can convince her to get in to the tank in the first place. Getting out is academic at this point.  We may have to go to plan B. And, so far, there isn’t one.  I’ll keep you posted.