After our incident with the kitchen pipe, yesterday, I headed into town as early as I could. Of my morning rounds, the only thing I took the time to do before I left was to make sure the outside cats had food.

There is an employee at the hardware store that I was very happy to see. Quite a few times now, I’ve been able to get help from him that went above and beyond. For all the times I’ve talked to him, he’s becoming aware of the state of the house we’re in, so he makes the effort to ask extra questions and give extra information.

This morning, I told him about what happened last night (I am extra glad I bought that box fan yesterday, because that was set up last night to dry the floor under the sink!), then showed him a piece that had come off my daughter had given me, just in case there were other types and sizes.

He’s never seen that part broken off like that before!

So he went over the different types of flexible pipes available, and I ended up getting a pair of 24 inch ones with built in shut off valves. We’ll just go ahead and replace them for both taps. He then asked if we had copper pipes, which we do, so he brought me over to a display sample in another aisle that had copper pipe in it, describing to me how to cut off the end, while popping the display piece apart to show me how it should look after abrading it…

Cut off the end. Of course, we have no cutter!

He found one for me.

Once I had the necessary bits and pieces, I picked up some other things my daughter put on the list for me – some of it are for the next time something like this happens! :-D

The down side is having to go into our contingency fund, to pay for all this. :-( But at least we have one!

Now, it’s up to my more able bodied girls to do the installation! They’re just going to wait until everyone is done using the water for a while, before shutting water for the whole house down again.

Once home again, I finished my rounds outside which, today, included using more of that anti-wasp stuff. I’d found a wasp nest in a corner of the house. We’d found one there last year, too. I’d hosed it away, and I thought they were gone, but last night I hosed it one more time, just in case.

Wasps started coming out again.

Somewhere in there is a crack, and I think they’re getting into the roof above the old kitchen.

When I checked it this morning, there was no sign of wasps, and no sign that the nest was being rebuilt, but that’s what I saw last night. I sprayed it anyway. Sure enough, wasps started falling out of… somewhere.

Thankfully, this stuff will contact kill, so any wasps that are somewhere in the crack would not be able to get out without coming in contact with the spray. I made sure not to use up the whole can so that, if I need to, I can spray again. At least a little.

Of course, in my rounds, I checked on the garden plots.

More squash are blooming. :-)

The size difference between some of these plants is rather remarkable! Some are still so tiny. I don’t know how much of that is due to the different types of squash, or to any health problems or weather damage. The first squash bed has just a few survivors, struggling to grow. This is the one that got frost damaged, even though we covered them for the night. The rest were all transplanted at the same time, so it’s more likely the differences there are due to type, not damage.

It should be interesting to see what we get out of these.

The Re-Farmer