Interesting Times
Beautiful nowhere is getting too interesting and not in a good way. Months ago, a guy started breaking into houses, ransacking them, and living there until he either moved on of his own accord or the sheriff deputies chased him away. Game cams and security systems get shots of him. You'd think a big guy like that, with multiple large tattoos, wild red hair and beard would be more conspicuous. He's traveling by foot, apparently wandering quite a long way south but returning up our way. Beautiful nowhere has a lot of second and third homes, semi-deserted farms, ramshackle outbuildings, etc. that are easy to break into. The man is supposed to be considered armed and dangerous, and he just showed up on my long, rural road this week. A neighbor, who apparently never reads any news or looks at any of the many photos posted all over the place, had a nice chat with him. She mostly stopped because he had his shirt stuffed with beets and lettuce he'd just stolen from a garden.
Since we have a couple of outbuildings that are rarely used, we did a tour of our place. No scary guy, just a lot of bear scat and mangled fruit trees, courtesy of the bear or bears visiting our orchard.
Tuesday, after an afternoon of garden clean-up during a brief hot spell, I came inside to find that the coffee grinder wouldn't work. In my world view, that's about as horrible as it gets. I settled in at my computer to check my email and my desktop's on button was yellow, not green. We were in the midst of a brown out. We get a lot of these here, but mostly during the winter storms. I'd just turned my machine off when Trouble began barking. Our lovely neighbor came by to let us know that a tree had come down on the power lines and had set a number of fires, including a couple in front of our fence line. We packed our go bags, I put Trouble into one of the cars, and we headed out to see what was going on. My guy used his tractor to clear the area on our side of the fence, while the power company slowly plodded through turning off the power. Everything moves in slow motion when there's a fire, except for the fire, of course. Once our volunteer fire department was allowed to go to work, they put it out in less than an hour. The power was out for around eleven hours.
Our well can probably be declared dry as of now. Every time we turn on a faucet, I get a bowl underneath to catch water. My beautiful garden is going to get the few drops we can spare. My guy called the two -- count 'em -- two well drillers in our area. We might get a driller out as soon as seven months from now. Cross-posted from dreamwidth.org
Since we have a couple of outbuildings that are rarely used, we did a tour of our place. No scary guy, just a lot of bear scat and mangled fruit trees, courtesy of the bear or bears visiting our orchard.
Tuesday, after an afternoon of garden clean-up during a brief hot spell, I came inside to find that the coffee grinder wouldn't work. In my world view, that's about as horrible as it gets. I settled in at my computer to check my email and my desktop's on button was yellow, not green. We were in the midst of a brown out. We get a lot of these here, but mostly during the winter storms. I'd just turned my machine off when Trouble began barking. Our lovely neighbor came by to let us know that a tree had come down on the power lines and had set a number of fires, including a couple in front of our fence line. We packed our go bags, I put Trouble into one of the cars, and we headed out to see what was going on. My guy used his tractor to clear the area on our side of the fence, while the power company slowly plodded through turning off the power. Everything moves in slow motion when there's a fire, except for the fire, of course. Once our volunteer fire department was allowed to go to work, they put it out in less than an hour. The power was out for around eleven hours.
Our well can probably be declared dry as of now. Every time we turn on a faucet, I get a bowl underneath to catch water. My beautiful garden is going to get the few drops we can spare. My guy called the two -- count 'em -- two well drillers in our area. We might get a driller out as soon as seven months from now. Cross-posted from dreamwidth.org