Crystal Groves

Burnt grass and foliage in Gettysburg from just this morning

This is the dryest summer that I can remember. I don’t know whether it’s the dryest on record for this area or not. Gettysburg climate only differs slightly from Westminster, Maryland. But Westminster, Baltimore, and Lancaster have all gotten a lot more rain than here, and Westminster is only 30 minutes away.

I asked dad if he remembers it ever being this dry back on the old farm he grew up on. He said he remembers some droughts, but nothing this bad.

Our trees are turning yellow, our stream is down to barely a trickle, and I keep worrying about our well since it is only 17 feet deep. I am strongly hoping that whatever is feeding our well is also staying at a trickle or more until we can get some decent rain around here.

The drive down to Frederick every day along route 15 is wrought with BURNT (not just dry, BURNT) trees, brown trees, dead trees, dying trees. I -know- I have never seen things this bad before. The drought coupled with intense regular temperatures in the 106 range have created an onslaught of damage.

Dad mowed down our corn Sunday. It was all dead from lack of water, so we have no corn this year. Tomatoes are doing okay, better now that we’ve gotten a submersible pump for the stream. Potatoes I have no clue yet, we’ll try to dig some up and see. I’ll be semi heart-broken if the potatoes are all dead as those are a large staple in our house.

I had many plans for canning this year.

Going through a drought this long (I’d say…maybe 1 or 2 significant rains since May, the rest mainly insignificant sprinkles or instant thunderstorms that last maybe 5 minutes at most but still don’t provide enough water to quench deep down in the plants), I’ve observed a few places that we could better prepare, and then others that will always remain hopeless in such extreme cases.

For example:

1. Rain Barrels – Rain barrels are a great concept of using a lot of under-utilized water. Our roofs provide so much water in a short amount of time, you can fill a rain barrel in a matter of minutes with a good rain. But you need a -lot- of rain barrels for them to be much worth around here. Watering the amount of plants and animals we do, we’d go through a rain barrel in a matter of 2 days. And this drought has lasted several months, and this doesn’t account for human use either.

So while rain barrels help, they don’t help nearly enough unless you have a LOT of them. I do plan to get more.

2. Submersible pump – Great asset to have, wish we had the means for it sooner. But doesn’t do much when the creek is down to trickle.

However, an adjustment in pockets of water could help. Dad is planning to get a bobcat over here and create a swimming pocket in one part of the stream that is surrounded by these big beautiful rocks. The deeper the pocket, the more water available for using the pump to water the garden. If we have several pockets, then we’ll have several reserve “wells” of water once the rains come again.

The downside, however, the pump will likely empty them out pretty fast in this type of drought.

I also don’t like that we only have an electric pump. I’ve always wanted a manual pump, but dad said it would be too much work. Well I figure that, but what happens if the electricity is out? Not too long ago the electricity blew out at work because of extreme heat melting the wires. It -is- possible. I still plan to get a manual pump anyway, I enjoy that type of a “work-out”.

Nothing of great importance is going on for me right now (that I’m willing to talk about here, anyway). I am steadily chipping away at the Grove membership manual that has been sorely lacking, as well as my CTP. I do a few web projects now and then for my Grove and for ADF, and I make sure I have personal time to just enjoy. Whether this is by watching deer outside with dad or going through boxes in the basement. The key thing for me is to find a balance between duties and life. For some reason people always seem to think I am overwhelmed or too busy with projects. That is simply not the case. I balance my life out very well. I reached a high point of busyness when I was taking my tax class, but that has long been over. I change tasks that I work on now and then, usually because I want to ride the “motivation” for a certain project until it runs out. Then I will move on to a different one. This works for me. I don’t have to complete everything right away, and I’m certainly not taking on anything new (unless it’s freelance work for extra $).

Speaking of taxes, I did get my return back on Friday. I got $1606 back, $114 of which went to state because of some of my freelance work. PA also has what is known as “Local” taxes, which I saved up $600 for throughout the year since work does not take out local taxes. I also spent $200 on some new clothes which was sorely needed as my duct tape was not holding up anymore The rest went to debt, and to starting my dad up his own checking account so I can see if switching him to that instead of credit will help us balance out our financial relationship some. On average he puts about $900 on my credit card, which is about what I pay into it every month, so this was clearly not working.

And before someone preaches to me about getting money back for taxes……I am not stupid. I know what taxes are. But I prefer not to “owe” taxes, I claim one of my exemptions and that is it. I do not care about your opinion on this matter.

I have not had much desire to blog about much of anything lately. I’m note entirely sure why. I’ve had things to write about, but most are summed up quickly and tweeted. I suppose twitter is taking away most of my blogging.

Taken yesterday afternoon:

We’re snowed in. I have nothing better to do than laugh at my dog.

Thanksgiving 2009

Today I am celebrating “buy nothing” day by cleaning, visiting with a co-worker, and going to a bachelorette dinner later.

I haven’t really had time (somewhat literally) to make any heart-felt journal post recently, so I’m going to try to sum up what I’ve been up to in a list for easy perusal.

• Dad’s leg has an infection again. He’s on antibiotics and special wrapping materials right now. I’ve also ordered some items that I’ve done research on that are supposed to help these types of skin ulcers. The next time he has it unwrapped, I’m going to take pictures for my own archiving purposes.
• Class is going well. It has a very laid back atmosphere, and I find myself asking questions which leads me to believe I’m actually learning. It’s a lot of material to go through though, and I’m studying almost daily to keep up. I’m going to try to switch to spending the afternoons on Sundays studying for the entire week so I have time for other things. I told a a friend of mine that they eventually teach us about tax fraud and the different methods people use to try and commit tax fraud. He says I’m going to be a Tax0r.
• The last 2 or 3 weeks I’ve been working 15 hour days between my full-time job and freelancing. One evening I was up until 2am (and still had to get up at 6am for work the next day), and am not sure if I went to bed before midnight for an entire week. It’s quite “taxing” on my brain and I’m glad things are settling down some. I can’t complaint too much because the extra money is more than welcome. (this is part of the reason I haven’t been answering emails, fyi)
• I had the Grove up to my abode last weekend. We were going to have a small bonfire out back and drum, but it rained so we stayed inside and ate food, drank Art’s homemade blueberry wine, and watched old bad movies. I’m grateful for having such wonderful people around me. And I’m also grateful for the two men that helped carry a new storage cabinet upstairs for me. (Thanks Art and Mark )
• Upcoming this month, I have to work for my full-time job on a Saturday all day. Several Grove events, some of which are pretty exciting. I’m going camping out near Berkeley Springs again, and am suspecting I’m going to freeze my ass off. And hopefully enjoying the harvest and season.
• My wisdom teeth healed fine, in fact during my follow-up appointment the doctor said they were healing beautifully. I’ve had absolutely no pain from the surgery, and no pain since the surgery, which leads me to believe the one partially impacted wisdom tooth was indeed causing me the jaw pain. The whole thing only cost like $250, and that came out of my HSA pre-tax money anyway. Very painless.
• Dad and I had either mormons or Jehovahs Witnesses stop by on Saturday, which I guess makes this officially our home now? I didn’t go outside because I was all henna’d up, but they did stop my dad on his lawnmower (rude?). I saw when they got out of the car that Bastian started jumping all over their nice suits and licking them, so I decided not to worry about bringing him inside. One of them was actually really scared of Bastian, and when they got back into the car I saw him using hand sanitizer Oh well, at least I have a pamphlet if I want to learn about God.
• Holiday shopping has started. I’ve got the sweetheart done, and dad started. I have a few more things to pick up for my dad and maybe my sister and I’ll be finished. Of course the money used for this is money I put away throughout the year so it’s not hurting my finances right now. The sweetheart and I are trying to decide whether to get dad a log splitter or a new lounge chair as his big gift. The log splitter would help a lot since wood is our main source of heat and I’m discovering more and more that dad needs things to be as easy as possible right now with his leg. I’m fine with splitting the wood myself, but dad is not going to wait until the weekend when I can do it. He’s that stubborn. The lounge chair is nice because it lets him relax, the one he has now is falling a part, and it’s his main seating place throughout the day. It’s fairly integral for him. I guess I’ll have to think about this more.
• Our well situation is finally fixed. We broke down and bought a new pump, since the one we got from our old house didn’t work quite right either. Now everything works fine, we have a new pump, new parts, new tank. Eventually we’ll need a new water heater, but I’m going to try and use this one up first.
• Speaking of planned expenses, during my trip to Berkeley Springs later this month, I’m going to stop by a wholesale tire place that has been recommended to me for years and pick up 4 brand new tires for the mustang. I’ve already got a quote between $80 and $123 each (includes mounting), depending on which tire I choose. So while I’m out that way I’ll use the money I’ve saved up for this and get some new tires before the winter.
• I got my car inspected for PA (where they told me I’ll need new tires before winter, which I suspected anyway), so I think I’ve completed pretty much everything to get myself officially transferred to PA now.
• I seriously need to downsize my rock collection. I started filling up the cabinet that my friend Caryn gave me, and it’s overflowing due to rocks. We are having a goods auction to support the Grove in a few weeks, maybe I will downsize then.
• Dad and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary in our new house on October 1st. Doesn’t seem like it’s been that long, but we’ve adjusted to it. I’m still not fully unpacked . Slacker.
• I had to call Comcast the other day because my “promotional” period ended and they raised my rates. I had to threaten to cancel in order to be rebundled to a better rate, but I’m set in stone for another year at least.
• Work had its annual party a few weeks back. I don’t think I played as well this year, but I had fun so that’s all that matters.

So I’ve had to deal with my first home repair this week. I don’t necessarily count the tree falling on the house in May as a repair, since insurance covered it and we got a new deck out of it. The chimney installation last November isn’t a repair either, and didn’t cost us anything.

But on Monday our well stopped working. Well not the well…just the pump. I had to deal with taking a…I guess equivalent of sponge bath in just 1 gallon of water that day. We thought we had it fixed on Tuesday so showers commenced as normal, but it was down again Wednesday (another bucket bath). My uncle came over Wednesday to help fix it since he’s a contractor (same one that built my deck). He also had some extra well line at his house since ours got a leak in it during all this as well (how many times can I say “well” in this entry?).

Yesterday I decided to just drive to my Aunts in Orrtanna and shower there. As of last night everything was working, but we do still need to get one small part for the pump since it’s not shutting off properly. I was able to take a shower this morning and I no longer have a sink full of dirty dishes, so I am happy.

All in all the cost for the entire ordeal is only like $200, so that’s not bad at all. I’m very grateful that my first home repair was so gentle .