Where are your garden pictures?!

Well, so, I wake up the other day and head to the john for my morning ritualistic pee.  All goes well until I flush the toilet and the water leaves but is not replaced.  A weirdly quiet, uni-directional flush.

Uh oh.  Could this have something to do with the 15 degree nighttime temps and my piece of crap house that was built by learning disabled chimpanzees before the age of “carpentry”?  Yes.  Yes, it could.  It seems that my pipes had frozen (and, later to learn, exploded).  But, I come from northern Minnesota where it gets to be a thousand below for months at a time, and I don’t recall our pipes freezing once.

That’s probably because the chimps in Hibbing knew not to route the incoming water main pipe outside the insulation in the basement– effectively outside for all practical purposes.  Not so the chimps of early Portland.

There was actually two freezes– one outside where the irrigation box exposed the water main and the awesome one inside that was probably ten feet of frozen copper.

OK, it’s a long story, but the happy ending is that I discovered Sharkbite couplings and PEX.  These little Sharkbite jobbies allow you to join copper and PEX like tinker toys.  No solder and no special tools.  Sweet.

I hacked out the frozen section and routed around it with a big chunk of PEX.  Problem solved.  We thawed the outside freeze with some hot water and a heatlamp.

Love your running water.  It’s a beautiful thing.

And in case you think I’m kidding:

The view from the shower this morning

Probably not taking the van anywhere soon.  I actually drove the Rav4 yesterday.

The native peoples wear their children for their long journeys of many moons.  They’re primitive but look almost happy.

Sometimes, in severe conditions, hunger strikes and neighboring tribes will steal children for stew and leather.

The chickens spent the day bickering, playing board games, and eating more than they really needed.  Or maybe that was us.  This picture is of the chickens, tho.

Oh, the poignant juxtaposition of the tropical greenhouse and the frigid arctic.  It’s just so… poignantly… metaphorical.

So, where are my garden pictures?  I burned them to stay warm.