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Seeds in the ground, new life abound! I come from a long line of gardeners but missed the gene. When my grandfather lived in this house, the entire backyard was one huge garden. I’ve made several attempts but “upper management” here at 317 Reliance let it be known, “If you let the weeds grow, your garden will be no more!” Okay, maybe she didn’t exactly say THAT, but it was clearly spelled out. I built some raised beds; not even if I live to a be 102 will they produce vegetables worth enough monetarily to cover the cost of the salt-treated lumber alone. I chalk the expense not up to the food budget but to entertainment and “mental health.”
One trouble with a king-sized garden here in town is that you have to pay for that water: at least it’s unlimited. Federalsburg has a regulation against having any sort of well at your house, and it sure is sandy over this way. (The soil is just like a sponge.) Back where I grew up, way, way over north of Linchester, the soil was heavy with clay and the home’s water was courtesy of a Gould’s pump. The electric motor tended to give up every other year. So as not to burn it out prematurely, Dad would draw irrigation water from the man-made pond in our side yard. This whole process would bring young Bryan much anxiety. That pump, you see, was electric and rather crusty in appearance. My father was actually always quite nervous around electricity but somehow not when it came to this device. Even at a young age, though, I peered at the apparatus and saw danger. It had to be sat right on the bank; I suppose, like some other types of water pumps, once it sucked the water up, it could move it quite a long ways. But it was limited in how far it could draw it in. The intake hose was rather short and made from a heavy, inflexible rubber which reminded me too much of a snake. Getting this whole thing operational seemed like quite an ordeal. After carrying the heavy thing to the pond, he’d run an extension cord and have his garden hose at the ready. Intake beneath the water, he’d plug it in and the motor would whine angrily. Then he set to priming.
After fussing and cursing, splashing water all about, eventually it would “catch” and then the glorious sight of “rust and corruption” spouting forth. For a minute that gusher was quite red with iron oxide. In the meantime, Dad was charged with getting the garden hose connected, H2O spraying all over that madly whirring AC motor. With that, the drama was over. Looking back, Pop sure laid a lot of trust at whomever it was that connected the ground wire on that electrical outlet!
We are blessed, in this county where we live, to be sitting atop a seemingly unlimited amount of underground water. I’ve often wondered what it would be like if a large enough well could be dug so that a small submarine could be dropped down there. Imagine puttering around deep under Caroline County! I wonder if that would truly be possible.
And so, this concludes my primer on pumps; I hope that I’ve managed to bring good things to the surface. Would you dare say it was a job well done?
