JD and Jean

We were coming back from Castle Rock and came upon a snake, coiled up in the middle of the lane.  J.D. decided to get a picture of it, so we turned around and stopped across from it.  While J.D. was taking this picture a man driving a tractor stopped and backed up.  He asked what kind of snake it was, and then came closer and declared “it’s a bull snake, don’t taste any good, like rattlesnake.”  When we left, it was still in good health, but it’s lifespan was at risk.

Click on the image above and get an up close look. Thank heaven for zoom lenses!

We decided to be bold for Labor Day and start laboring. We have wanted to replace the bathroom faucet, here is the account:

It came out fairly easily:

then we had to figure out how to get the bottom part out.

I added shutoff valves, now we’ll never need them.

The new faucet, proud and shiny.

Of course, it wouldn’t be complete without an inspection from the chief engineer!

After our neighbor over the fence recently redid the fence, digging new holes and putting in new posts, he was anxious to trim the trees. The ugly dead Russian Olive trees, were an eyesore and he actually climbed up and used a chain saw to cut off the overhanging limbs.

Today we got the itch and decided to take things into our own hands, literally.  Things like saws, loppers, and rope.  Things like branches, limbs, and whole trees.

One we had to make sure didn't fall and wreck the fence

We felt the rush of success and carried on.

Big Branches Come Down

So Jean didn’t want to quit, and I figured we were on a roll.

Sorry, sawing forever isn’t fun, it’s work!

A whole lot of hand sawing went into this

And the yard cleaned up nicely.

It took the whole morning, We have conquered one Russian Olive, with one half of the other to go.

On the way home tonight I saw a beautiful sunset, from fiery orange over the mountains to pink out east.  By the time I pulled over at a park it had changed.

So Grandpa wanted to get in the scene, and this is what I got.

My head is larger than his, imagine that, so he enjoyed the fun.

The ward was having a chili cook-off, so I decided to check out the internet for recipes. Wow! More than you can sift through. I picked out a highly rated one, and this is what we got:

I had a little help from Jean, but this was mostly mine. Here is the chili before the beans.

I adjusted the recipe, putting in some mustard, too much I fear. The recipe called for a lot of meat, so I added more tomatoes and beans, along with some ketchup. End result looks good, we’ll see how it fares.

I needed a hat to protect my delicate head when I’m out in the sun. This is the result of a diligent search.

You can also see the new pajamas we got Grandpa.

This summer we had an interesting experience with water. We moved Grandpa in and shortly after go a bill that seemed to be much higher. We didn’t think too much about it since it was summer and maybe we had been watering the lawn more, but the sprinklers had been turned on for two months so maybe it was Grandpa using more water, but did he use that much more?

We were busy the next month and came home from Jean’s Grandma Farr’s 100th birthday celebration in Utah and looked at the mail. The next water bill had come and was out of sight! I decided to look a the water meter that night. I made sure no water was running in the house and looked at the meter.

I don’t have a video, but the little six sided red spinner next to the 8 was SPINNING! WE HAD A MAFOR LEAK!! I timed it for several minutes and figured it was running at some incredible rate, something like 6 gallons in 10 minutes. I figured it could be the sprinkler system, since once before several years ago it developed a leak and we had to shut it off. I opened the cover and could hear a hissing, like water spraying from the valve, I turned it off and the red spinner stopped.

Our consumption over the summer was 9, 18, 38, 37, 9, and 6 thousand gallons per month. I turned off the sprinkler just a week before the meter got read again, so we had a leak begin in one month, run for a whole month, and get turned off part way through the last month. Whew!

Discussions around the dinner table, included Grandpa telling me to call the city, maybe they would refund part of my bill. I did call them, and the lady was surprised to see our consumption jump up. She scheduled a city employee to come out and check things. i took off from work to be there when he arrived and it was comical. He looked at the meter before he came to the door and said “what did you do, there is no leak now?” I explained what I discovered, and he said that sometimes they can’t tell where the water goes, one home lost 80,000 gallons to a leak. He said the city didn’t have any way to help determine just where the leak was, and couldn’t recommend any sprinkler contractors officially. No help. So we water by hand now and learned a lesson to check things when the bill looks strange. Oh, and Grandpa hardly uses any water, we can’t tell the difference he made in a regular month.

While I was becoming an expert on water meters and such, I made my own meter cover wrench. I’ll put up a picture of it and the story later.

I took this Sunday morning about 8:15 when we went by Grandpa’s to check the mail.

He always says you don’t have to go to the mountains to see the leaves change, just drive down his street.

Jean got an itch and gave the weeds the ax. The garden space looks great.

We are on a new adventure of sorts, Grandpa’s meetings are the same time as ours now.