Boil, Boil, Boil!

58 Replies

Great excitement this morning. A warm light bathed the maple trunks on the hillside below our house. I hadn’t seen sunshine in days and days and days. I grabbed the camera, took this quick snap of the trees and came back in the house.

Moments later, as the sun rose higher, the light changed and I had to go out on deck for another picture.

The brightness extended to the bay on the left and lit up the water.

Ignoring the ugly hydro line, do you see the colour difference right about where the line crosses the photo? We’ve had so much rain lately that the small silt-laden rivers that empty into the bay have turned the water brown near their mouth.

Flooding and excess run-off have necessitated yet another “Boil Water Advisory” for the town. I’m so thankful to be living outside of town and having our own well that is very, very, very deep, with clear, wonderful water.

The townspeople must be thinking of the lines of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” where he says, “Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”

Do you have boil water advisories in your area? Flooding? Any sunshine?

58 thoughts on “Boil, Boil, Boil!”

  3. Pit

    Hi Anneli,
    Now that’s interesting: flooding causes your city water to be contaminated?! You’re lucky then, with your own well. Btw, we have our own one, too, and are happy with it. The advantage: we are not bound by the city’s water restrictions, though we try to comply with them, as all the water comes from the same aquifer. Or maybe not, as our well is fairly shallow at 180 feet. The city wells – way outside the city limits – must go much, much deeper. But still, even having our own well does not mean we waste water. Talking of contamination: I’ve never heard of it happening here with city water. Our own water is ok, btw. We had it tested only recently. So we hope atht, with what the draught of the last years, the well will still go on producing.
    Have a wonderfrul day,
    Pit

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    1. wordsfromanneli Post author

      I think they are trying to do something about the water situation in town. The intake pipe for the city’s drinking water is in the lake behind town and I’ve heard rumours that they are trying to lower that pipe. Not sure on this, but whatever they do, I hope they can fix it.

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  8. crazywriterof6

    In the mountains of West Virginia. Used to live in Michigan. In WV though, the flooding can get bad. Constant water mains bust. I am amazed they are buried so shallow in the south. It still gets quite cold here. Just seems the “freeze line” would still be deeper than the lines are buried.

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    1. wordsfromanneli Post author

      In northern British Columbia they put the water lines at least 8 feet below ground and as far as I know those lines didn’t freeze but of course they have to come up somewhere to go into the houses…. But here in southern BC that isn’t a problem. Flooding is mainly from the rivers overflowing, especially when combined with extra high tides and the wind blowing the wrong way.

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  10. lorigreer

    I have read that water will be the “oil” of the future due to expected shortages and the effect of pollution. We are lucky to have an abundance of water in Oregon, so far. Loved the photos…you live in a gorgeous place!

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        2. wordsfromanneli Post author

          I just read your comment a second time, Lori. I thought at first you said a winter’s retreat. Hence my first answer. Now a writer’s retreat would be even better! Any time! Actually, I was in Melaque (near Manzanillo) when I started writing Julia’s Violinist. I wrote a lot of it in Mexican students’ notebooks while sitting at the beach and then later I’d go back to our bungalow to transcribe it to the laptop. I still have those notebooks. They’re little treasures now.

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  13. Luanne

    Such beautiful and detailed photos. We have Phoenix city water and our water has a big turbidity problem. We are trying to get the city to help us. They are working against our interests. We have to filter our water for drinking for us and the cats, but I worry about our ice and water for cooking.

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  16. Ursula

    We have to buy bottled water for drinking and to clean our teeth. We can´t have a good well since we are “sitting” on hard rocks. So we have to do with the well dug into the creek in front of the house. We filter it and for cooking and bathing it’s good enough. Our very small village has no water from the bigger village – maybe one day it will happen. Beautiful pictures!

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  17. Lori

    It was cloudy here for a week before Thanksgiving, then on that Thursday the clouds broke open to reveal beautiful cobalt blue. It’s been sunny since, but it’s supposed to get cloudy later today. We haven’t had to boil water in this area yet. We live in a pretty busy suburb, so no well-water here. We did have flooding back in June, then we dried out for the rest of the year and entered a drought!

    Enjoy that sun. When it’s been gone that long, it’s a joy to have when it shows up again. IOW, it’s easy to appreciate it. I hated the constant beating sun rays when I lived in Florida and used to long for clouds. Now I’ve got a wonderful mix of both.

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    1. wordsfromanneli Post author

      I agree. Too much of anything is not nice. Unfortunately, this seems to be the way our climate is changing. We used to get a mix of sunny days and cloudy days all year round, but now it’s extremes — too much drought and heat in the summer and too much wind and rain (and snow) in the winter. It’s all or nothing nowadays.

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    1. wordsfromanneli Post author

      Thank you for appreciating my choice of words, David. This is just how it l felt as I looked out the window that morning. Such a soothing light it was. Well, that light is long gone and we had heavy downpours of rain all night, clouds this morning, and fresh snow high up on the hills.

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  20. D. Wallace Peach

    Well, I’m also here in the NW, Anneli, and it’s just been rain with about 10 minutes of sunshine every afternoon. No flooding, thank goodness! I love the two photos of the trees and the color difference. Isn’t that amazing. Light transforms the world. 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

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    1. wordsfromanneli Post author

      I almost didn’t post the two pictures because people might wonder what I’d done to them to make the light so different but that is really how it was when the light changed in just minutes! You’re so right. “Light transforms the world.” Can tell you write fantasy, but this was real. Sometimes there’s not much difference, between the two, is there?

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  23. roughwighting

    Hi. I wrote you a long comment here yesterday, but it didn’t go through (a problem from my side I think). I’m hoping this one works. I think wells are wonderful. We had one for 10 years in New England and it was marvelous. We’ve never had a problem with our town water fortunately in our other places though.

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