Rain, Rain, Rain

The rain gauge overflowed at 6 inches overnight and another 2 inches since we emptied it. That is at least 8 inches in the last 24 hours. We are a bit waterlogged to say the least/ The lake, for the first time in a long time, is over the spillway by .08 feet. That means Pecan Bayou through town will be running bank full or more. This has been an unbelievably wet spring and summer so far.

I forgot to include the cat

It occurred to me after yesterday's post that I had forgotten to include a picture of the cat. She is not always helpful on these trips but she goes along much better than at first. Here is her favorite pose.

When we first took her with us to the creek, We took along her drinking fountain, made out of a fish bowl and a small recirculating pump. She would not touch it there but she used it great here. It was like a foreign object to her. She seems to take on a different personality when we travel with her.

The best laid plans...

Well you know the rest of that ditty, and yes they do go astray. We traveled to the creek house with 3 sizable projects in mind. We wanted to paint the outside of the house, we wanted to install a new water heater, and we wanted to replace the top on the silverware cabinet and cover it with Formica to match the main counter top. Then we wanted to replace 2 of the heating elements in the kitchen stove. The first Saturday was already taken with my sister's 50th wedding anniversary celebration. Weather forecasts made the painting iffy and then on the way back from the anniversary gig we found that the lift bucket that we planned to rent was not to be found. Both Lowes and Home Depot have none on hand. Since the top of the end walls are about 25 feet off the ground. plus the weather, the painting was scratched.

We had to wait for Monday to get the water heater so on Sunday I tackled the stove. Should be simple, 3 connections to each element, take them off and put them on and it should be good as new.

   
I did that and tested it but not by cooking on it. Martha did that later and it failed miserably. The element is controlled by a 5 position switch and the coolest 3 positions did not work at all, not just on the new ones but on all 4 elements. So cooking was difficult to say the least.

Monday came and we were getting ready to go get the water heater when the refrigerator repairman called and wanted to come replace a fan that had failed on Spring break, We were expecting that but didn't know when. That delayed the trip for the water heater until afternoon. So we got a water heater and all the plumbing supplies to connect it and returned. Other stuff took up time and it was after supper before we opened the box to get it out. When we did, we found a this.

So now we faced a 60 mile round trip to return it. That would wait until Tuesday morning and then we discovered that all the water heaters like this that were in stock were similarly damaged. So scratch project 2. That leaves us with project 3. We had purchased a piece of MDF to use on the top so the top was cut and Martha began cutting the Formica to size. Here she is working on it.

I worked on installing the Formica and trimming the edges with a router. See below

So after a couple of days work we had the cabinet ready. It came out at a perfect height and the Formica was the same pattern as the main counter so I thought it looked really good, here's a shot...

So we accomplished 1 of the major projects and the minor one didn't do well either. I removed the new elements and put the old ones in but nothing improved so I brought them home and will inquire where I bought them to see what my mistake was. Hopefully we can get it fixed on the next trip. Here are a couple of general pictures to finish up.

Daybreak Friday morning

Taking a break on Friday afternoon, no fish...

All together we drove 975 miles and it was a good trip. The weather did act up with storms on Tuesday and Wednesday with winds of around 40 MPH. We would not have wanted to be up in the bucket painting in that. We had a couple of brief rain showers but all told it wasn't bad. The anniversary celebration was great also and we got to see family that we rarely see.

Spring Break work

It is apparent that I failed to post something about our spring break trip to the creek. Some of you may want to see these pictures. We have been working on the kitchen for over a year and now it is pretty close to finished.

Here are a couple of pictures of the living area. It also looks better than it did.

Butterfly on the boat cover

The garden has grown, first Tomatoes

It is amazing what a little rain will do to the garden. We have had more spring rain this year than we have had is several years and it shows. Lake Brownwood is up 6 feet and Proctor lake is 2 feet over the spillway. Proctor was so low that they had closed all the boat ramps two weeks ago.

Look for the tomatoes in the next picture. They are right in the center, a bit fuzzy but they are there.

The Garden

Here is a picture of our garden. We only have tomatoes, peppers and squash but there should be plenty of each. This year we are trying a drip irrigation system This allows us to water a few minutes every day and with a timer we can automate the process. The timer I have leaks so I will need a new one to do the automation bit. I will do it before we go away for more than a day. The garden uses 1 gallon per hour drippers and applies the water directly to the roots of the plant, thus saving water but getting what we need on the plants. They will only run for 5-10 minutes each day. We will also use the same system to water some flowers. In close proximity to the garden we have Canna  Lilies and roses, 2 of the roses are pictured below.