Sweet Saturday: In My Yard

~Bouquet of Red Tulips~

Here are some photos from my gardens! I really needed to get out of the house and take some pictures, it's been a stressful few days: in the middle of the spring thaw, with a stream and pond in our backyard and goodness only knows how many gallons per hour of water floating under our house, our sump pump quit. Thankfully I noticed it just before it started to leak into our basement - the water was at the rim of the sump hole!
Hubby went outside and fixed a weird blockage in the discharge pipe, which seemed to be the problem initially (later on, I went outside in the pitch black, now mosquito infested rain to re-dig the hole that the water drains into, after the pump seemed to be struggling to empty the water). Then, after taking the pump out and putting it back in the sump hole, the pump turned on and stayed on, pumping water out of the sump hole (and from underneath our house) for 20 minutes STRAIGHT. After that it was switching on about every 30 seconds to deal with the water rushing in....Problem was, it wasn't switching on by itself....apparently our sump pump is a little temperamental and needs to be in 'just the right spot' for the float to activate the switch to turn the pump on and off. I, being the only member of our house who is able to stay awake (read: not able to sleep anyway), I was the one who went down into the chilly (but thankfully still dry) basement and pulled the stupid thing, every 30 seconds for about an hour. Then, it slowed down to about once every 6 minutes and remained that way for another 6 hours (I made myself a nest from a bean bag chair, quilt and yoga mat on the chilly basement floor and watched almost the entire extended trilogy of the Lord of the Rings to stay awake and switch on the sump pump every 6 minutes for 6 whole hours). Yes, you heard me, 6 hours, until at about 4AM, after pulling the pump on, jiggling it into another spot, and waiting for the next time it had to go on, praying it would switch on all by itself....it finally did! WA-Hoo!

~Little Sparrow (I think it's a sparrow anyway)~

Hubby then went into town the next day and got a new sump pump to replace the now (mostly) working old one. We took out the old pump, took off the discharge pipe (which created a wonderful puddle on the concrete floor, despite the towels thoughtfully laid down prior), and set to work replacing the sump pump....only to find out that the adaptor we had was the wrong size to fit into the new sump pump! Great. So we then had to reattach the old sump pump and place it back into the sump hole, where it (again) had to be placed into it's 'just right spot' - though this time it only took about 2 hours before I had it right.

~Closeup of Red Tulip~

Thus, today we will be getting (hopefully) the correct adaptor for the new sump pump so that I can sleep again, and not worry that our basement will flood.
I hope you like my stress-relieving photos!
I am also working on designing a new jewellry collection, so stay tuned!
Have a great day!