Good News Bad News

Our parents in their prime.
The crank telephone on the wall in the photo of Harold suggests that it may have been taken sometime in the mid'50s, not long after he and Mother were married.
He was obviously proud of his ribbons, won at horse shows.  Seems that trend carried on to other members of the family.
Meanwhile, Mother sat proudly on her Adare's Countess Largo in the front yard near the garage just off North Boyer Road.
I'd say both of my parents looked mighty fine at the time. 

                                                                                    ~~~~

Not to use a cliche, but "at the end of the day" to find a couple of classics like those above made for a happy ending to Tuesday, July 30 at the Lovestead.

All started out well.  I picked a kettle overflowing with green beans from the garden and still have more to pick this morning.  Six baggies of blanched beans went into the freezer along with another bag of blueberries. 

About mid-morning I drove over to Barbara and Laurie's to take pictures of their hay crew. Well, their hay crew were finishing off their desserts from the lunch my sisters had fixed them. Lunch came a little early cuz the guys got all the hay in by about 10 a.m.

We visited and talked about how good it was to have the hay in.  Then, I went on my way. When I arrived home, one message on the answering machine caused the day to veer off toward a not-so-thrilling subplot.

Carla, the Oden Water rep., called to tell me that "red flags" were rising when they checked the winter's supply of water used at the Lovestead----167,000 gallons, she said.

That's almost 80,000 more than we're allotted for our $55 monthly fee.  

Carla had asked her son to come and check the meter again six days later cuz "the Love's don't use that much water."  

Well, in six days, 14,000 gallons were used.  

"You may have a leak, or you're using a lot more water," she added, telling me she'd be back in the office by 4.

Having to wait until 4 to piece out what might be wrong is not an option whenever such problems surface for me. I like to get the problem solving done immediately if not yesterday. 

A sick feeling in the gut accompanied my perplexed mind.  

"We've only filled the swimming pool once this year---twice other years," I thought to myself. "And, that one night I left the sprinkler on certainly could not have had any effect on all the water use over the winter." 

It was pretty obvious we have a leak, but where?

Shortly after receiving the call, I drove to Poelstras, home of the only dairy farm in Bonner County.  Randy was home, and Randy knew about our water problem.  

"Look at your frost-free hydrants," he suggested.  

To which I countered that our frost-free hydrants were all pretty new and that I was sure I hadn't seen any "telltale green grass" around any of the three here on the place. 

Then, we talked about automatic waterers.  Randy told me that one of his, which leaked, had caused some extra water use a while back at his dairy, and it took him a while to discover the problem. 

"We use a lot of water here," he said, so we didn't notice. 

Randy also told me that if we could find the leak, we could apply for a hardship case with our bill.   So, I went home and did some more looking.  

I may have found the culprit.  After attempting to kill off yet another storm of bees, I was able to turn off one of our automatic waterers, which has wet ground at its surface.  

This morning we have more wet ground around the waterer, and it looks like part of the inner mechanism has gone bad or might need some slight tinkering. 

We're praying that we've found the cause cuz we sure don't want to have to dig up the place looking for a leak. 

The day got better after an afternoon of attempting to solve the water mystery.  Willie and Debbie had borrowed our truck to pick up a used kitchen range for us.  

Debbie's friend had replaced her kitchen appliances and offered Debbie a really good deal on the stove. 

After a few minutes of figuring out how to get appliances in and out of doors, we all concluded that the much-improved stove looked pretty good in its new home.  

The burners and oven even worked.  Good news.  Bill has cooked his sausage this morning, even without smoking up the house, and he approves. 

Soon, contrary to Bill's wishes, the old stove will not sit out in the front yard.  He and Willie will haul it to the transfer station where surely someone will want a slightly used piece of yard art. 

So, it was definitely a good news-bad news day, and the photos found among all the collections topped it off nicely, diminishing  most thoughts of "drip, drip, drip" "kerchink, kerchink, kerchink."