Worms

This breakdown phase won’t quit. Our neighbor’s well pumping system went down the other day and we hooked him up to our system. At that point he made the observation that our’s wasn’t working properly, over cycling. It seemed to me to be ok but I trust his judgement and asked him to send the guys working on his to check it out. Apparently the bladder in the tank, essentially the tank, had a leak and the relay/contactor electrical box was corroded and not long for this world. Fixed, at no small cost to us. We also lost our TV signal which I traced down to the connections exterior to the house from the outside amplifier. I was able to make it work, sort of, but not for long. So that added to the list of recent equipment issues. I guess all this stuff is 12 years old and that’s a good run for exterior items so to be expected. Just wish it wouldn’t all happen at once. If I rationalize that we have no water or sewer bill but have to replace a major component every 12 years, that’s not so bad.

TV fixed. You may recall several months back I posted that the Antenna amplifier power supply had been totally buried in a huge fire ant mound which had caused a total loss of signal. I had tie wrapped the power supply up about 3’ on the antenna pole to avoid that ever happening again. The repair guy first tried replacing the connectors that I suspected were the problem and they were certainly gone but that wasn’t the problem. He opened the box and it was absolutely full of sand from the fire ant nest and it had corroded the circuit board to the point of eating off the legs of a couple of capacitors. He didn’t have a replacement power supply so decided to try to repair this one with a couple of spare capacitors he had. He cleaned it all very well then soldered in a couple of new capacitors and away it went. Just like new. I was impressed that he would even try that level of repair in the field and equalled impressed that it worked. In hind sight, I should have opened the box the first time but never for a minute did I think it could be full of grib. Same rationalization as with the water system – we have free TV, year round so an occasional breakdown is not so bad.

A little garden breakthrough – worms. I was digging out where I had planted beans and cucumbers – underneath the trellis – and started finding regular earth worms. That’s a sign the soil is good. It’s been bugging me for a couple of years since I know the soil is getting richer but still no worms. They’re often in the compost pile and I had just naturally assumed that as I transferred compost into the garden, worms would surely follow but until now, it hadn’t happened. I don’t know how widespread the phenomena is but maybe I’m working in a hotbed of new residents just cranking out good stuff.