...for discerning weeders October, 2011
H-TWO-OH! Inside this issue:
Coming Events
2
Critter Calendar
3
Amazing Plant
3
It’s Never Too
4
Late BIA Home Show
4
Weed of the
5
Month Mark Your
5
Calendar Graveyard Plants 6 A ‘Wild’
7
Halloween October Holidays 7 Book Review
8
Last Word
9
DON’T FORGET! You have to log your hours onto the VMS system!
Bill Buckellew
A couple of months ago, another Master feet of duct tape, and two very sore backs, Gardener talked me into digging a shallow- the picture shows the end result. water well. “It‟s easy,” he said, “You just We felt like James Dean when he hit the stick a hose down into a pipe, turn the oil gusher in “Giant.” That water is going water on, and it goes down until you get to right back down to the 200,000-gallon unthe water.” He had done this many times. derground rain barrel where it came from, “What the heck, I‟ll try it,” I said, even and it‟s nice and cool, even in the summer though I didn‟t know squat about wells. heat. What I also didn‟t know was that this had We‟re already working on the second well. not been attempted in the Rocky Bayou This one will have an electric pump like the area before. one in the picture, and the other will have I went down a few feet easily; the hose just an old-fashioned hand pump to add to the pushed the sand up, and the casing went down. Then, the trouble started. Hardpan, peat, clay, and sand so compacted that it took a sledgehammer to drive the casing down. I called the mentor and asked for help. (Note that “I” changes to “we” after this point.) After a few weeks‟ work, we finally got down to 22 feet and hit water. We beat on the pipe until we got down to 29 feet and had a sevenfoot water table. We put a well point down, and then atBill’s new well. tempted to extract the casing. Inch by excruciating inch, we jacked it up. landscape and give the grandkids someNow, it was time to hook up the pump. thing to fool around with. While we knew we were in water, all we This is one of those “if I can do it, anyone could pump was air. Troubleshooting small can” projects. If you are interested, I can let air leaks in PVC pipe connections is very you know the material costs. Rick‟s a good tedious work. Now, after three jacks, two teacher, we both had a fine time at it, and I water pumps, a crankcase pump, several have lots of clean, high-quality water now. 1