Confession time around here. All is not always perfect in paradise. Until this morning, the water here at the (not so) Urban Hennery smelled distinctly like rotten eggs, and had since we moved in. And while it didn’t actually taste bad, the odor was enough to convince you that it did.

It’s something that we knew from the home inspection, while Mike did, since I wasn’t at the inspection I was blissfully unaware until we moved in. Until I turned on the faucet the night we moved in I had no idea that our water smelled like the hot springs at Yellowstone.

The previous owners installed a whole house filtration system that reduces the odor a bit, but doesn’t completely eliminate it. And the filters are fairly short lived due to the volume of sediment (replace every 4 months) and odor (replace every 8 weeks) that the well produces. Depending on what’s causing the smell, the solution is either periodically shocking the well with chlorine, or installing a permanent system that injects either chlorine or performs osmosis or drilling a new well.

Last night we finally got around to shocking the well with chlorine bleach to start to figure out what’s causing it. So far we’ve eliminated the two major causes - the hot water heater and the water softener. We don’t have a water heater since we’ve got a Bosch hot water on demand system. And we by-passed the softener 2 weeks ago to see if that would help. It gave us a short term improvement, but no dice as a permanent solution.

So last night we put a shocking amount of bleach down the well to try to determine our next steps. It’s a crazy thing to do really. You put bleach down your well to try to make it smell better!?! And it takes a bit of time, but once it cycles through the effect is instantaneous. We had to run about 80 gallons of water through the system and back down the wellhead with a hose until the pump kicked in. When it did the change happened almost immediately. The water went from smelling bad to faintly smelling of chlorine. Since it was supposed to smell strongly per the instructions from the Snohomish Health District, we put some more bleach down the well until it smelled strongly.

Then we bled the chlorine through the whole system by opening the faucets, frost free hydrants and flushing the toilets until the water everywhere smelled of chlorine. After that it’s a waiting game. How long can you live without flushing a toilet, washing a dish or brushing your teeth? Luckily we remembered to fill all the pet water bowls, set up the coffee pot and brush our teeth before we chlorinated the system…

This morning we ran about 250 gallons of water through the outdoor faucets to flush the pressure tank and the well, then bled off the remainder through the house fixtures. Finally we replaced the sediment and carbon filters and ran a couple loads of towels in the washer and also the dishwasher to finish the flush.

As of now, the water smells faintly of chlorine when you first turn on the faucet, but it disappears in moments. And for the first time in 2.5 months, the water didn’t smell like rotten eggs when I took a shower.

Now we just have to wait to see how long it takes for the smell to come back. If it’s weeks then we’ve got sulfur in the water and we’ll need to evaluate more long-term options. If it’s months, then it’s sulfur bacteria and we can hopefully get by with periodically shocking the well to control the problem.

Yeah. On the one hand shocking the well was so much easier than we expected. On the other, who wants to have to contaminate their primary water source with chlorine on a semi-regular basis? But then again, it’s still pretty damn pure water. And we know that for sure since we had it extensively tested before we bought the place.

The fruit trees are blooming, as are the tulips, and spring is definitely here. Finally!

Today was overcast but strangely warm, it finally started to rain just as the sun went down. I finished 90% of the hard work in the veggie garden today. That involved finishing 3 of the last 4 rows to be dug and raked. The only one left is for the tomatoes and since I’m not putting them out until next weekend it can wait.

After I finished the rows I transplanted 20 broccoli / broccoli raab starts and 20 lettuce starts. More than I intended, but we’ll just eat some of it really young to make room for the next round in the succession planting plan. The broccoli is mostly starts I bought last weekend as mine went weirdly leggy. When I picked them out at the plant sale I didn’t think about the fact that I was supposed to be transplanting broccoli in rounds of 8 starts - not 16! And since I ended up buying four varieties we’re a bit long on broccoli.

As for the lettuce, well, really I just should have thinned a lot better than I did a while ago. But since I didn’t, I transplanted A LOT of lettuce today. Oh well, we’ll just start cutting sooner than we normally would. Plus it meant that tonight we got to have salad made with today’s thinnings! Yum!

After all of that I ran out of steam. So tomorrow we’ll seed carrots, radishes, peas (finally!), bush beans and spinach. Then hopefully it will start to look like a garden and not just a bunch of dirt. The next round of lettuce, broccoli and basil are under lights, along with the first of the Brussels sprouts and dill.

Now the easy part starts right? I’m much more looking forward to weeding, seeding and harvesting than I did moving all that damn dirt! I’ve got a secret to share about moving that dirt, but I need to take a picture first…

Tonight I realize that what’s quickly becoming normal would have seemed extraordinary not that long ago. Mike got caught at work late tonight because one of his crew’s had the street opened and it was a mess. When we lived in the city a night like tonight would have gone like this: I would have gotten home first, maybe pulled a weed or two, collected the eggs, taken the dogs to the park and then gone inside and hung out to wait for Mike to get home. It would have seemed like a long wait and I would have likely ended up with the TV on.

Tonight, I got home just after 5:00. I corralled the cat for his afternoon meds, changed my clothes and headed outside. I spent 2.5 hours in the garden just enjoying the evening and digging in the dirt. I set up soaker hoses for the potatoes and asparagus, prepped two more rows for Brussels sprouts, broccoli, bush beans and squash. I watered the onions and the herb garden.

Then I walked out and checked on the chickens. The little girls were roosting on the roost bar for the first time, and Steve and the big girls were up on the shelf where they don’t belong but love to be. With 6 eggs in my pockets (yesterday’s too) and a beer in my hand, I let the dogs out of the yard and we headed out to the back field so they could run and sniff and chase each other through the tall grass.

I strolled behind them admiring the new leaves coming out on the trees and the puff balls where dandelions were just a few days ago. I smelled the cherry blossoms and admired the apple blooms. We checked on the blackberries - leaves but no flowers yet - and said hello to the neighbor’s steers.

When we’d had our fill of the last light of dusk we headed inside to do the dishes and make some dinner. Leftover local pork roast pulled and turned into bar-b-que sandwiches with California artichokes ready just in time for Mike to get home.

And while it was happening it just seemed normal. It wasn’t until Mike asked me what I did after work that it struck me that I’d done a lot of different things and never even noticed.

Sometimes life gets so busy that it’s easy to miss the little details.

About 5 weeks after we moved Sterling (our 11 year old cat) started peeing in the closest where his litter box was. Not in the box, but on the carpet near it. He hasn’t used a litter box regularly for years, preferring to go outside, but with the move he’d decided to be more of an indoor cat and I was humoring him. I thought it was because I’d bought a different litter trying to be eco-friendly. So on my way out the door to go to Vegas I asked Mike to go buy some Tidy Cat and some Nature’s Miracle. I assumed that that would fix it.

Nope. He proceeded to keep peeing in the closest, so I moved his litter box from the closest in my home office to under the desk. Not an ideal spot, but I figured that he’d start going outside again when the weather got nicer. Then he started peeing under the other half of my L-shaped desk. I locked him out of the office and moved his box onto the tile in the bathroom. I thought, okay problem solved. And it was, for about 4 days.

In the meantime I remembered that years ago when we lived in an apartment we’d had this problem and it turned out that he had a urinary tract infection. So just in case I made him a vet appointment for today. By this morning we’d been pee-on-carpet free for several days and I almost canceled the appointment. Then he peed in the hallway while I was getting dressed and I caught him. Bad cat!

So off to the vet we went this afternoon. Turns out that poor Sterling has another raging UTI, likely brought on by the stress of moving. And he’s been suffering for almost a month. Poor baby! Bad pet mama!

Luckily he’s now on big doses of antibiotics for 10 days and an anti-inflammatory for the next few days. Hopefully he’ll feel better soon. Now we just have to get the last of the cat pee out of the carpet…

On a lighter note, and in keeping with Denise’s comment, here’s another article from the NY Times. If people can figure out how to farm on vacant lots in New York, Brooklyn and Detroit, I guess there’s just no excuse for the rest of us.

It inspires me to see communities pulling together to grow the produce they want and need in areas that are often considered food deserts.

Who will tell the people? We are not who we think we are. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country.

I don’t always agree with Thomas Friedman, but I almost always respect what he has to say and how well thought out it is. I don’t even agree with his entire editorial, but I do agree with what he said above.

We are living on borrowed time and we are deluding ourselves. We, as a country, seem to believe that we can go on the same way forever. That what matters most is what we want, that what happens in the rest of the world is interesting but not that important. That the food crisis that is perhaps just beginning is happening “somewhere else” but that it won’t affect us here. That paying $4 a gallon is unfair and something that can be fixed by repealing gas taxes. That we shouldn’t have to change our behavior or our daily habits, but instead the world should be forced to conform to our expectations.

What happened to us? When did we lose touch with the very values that made us a “great nation” to begin with? When did we lose sight of the fact that hard work and frugality and generosity go hand in hand to make us the nation we once were and want to be still.

Why can’t we see?

This is Wilma. She’s one of the chicks, who are now 8 weeks old.

She’s a silver laced Wyndotte and after much consideration, I’ve decided to name her and her twin Wilma and Betty. Not sure why other than that it was the first pair of women that jumped into my head when she suddenly became friendly last week. Thanks to Destabee and Twinville for the suggestion

I can’t tell them apart, so for all I know they’re both friendly, but no matter, whichever is being friendly at any given moment is Wilma and the other is Betty.

When I was sitting on the ground yesterday she climbed all over me testing each shiny spot or object to see if it was a treat. I guess my recent work trying to socialize them is paying off, or maybe they just know I’ll protect them from Steve?