Monday February 10, 2014 Guerneville CA.
There’s clay in our water,…. oh my!
Today I had a physical therapy appointment at 3PM, so in some ways it messed up my day for getting onto the river in my kayak.
With all this rain
This last series of storms dropped almost fifteen inches of rain on us. There are five houses on spring water and since all the springs are all flowing at full capacity right now, the water is picking up some clay and now our water is a little on the murky side.
That might bother some people, but I know some people go to the health food store to buy clay to eat, so I don’t mind a little clay in my water, although I prefer the crystal clear spring water we normally get.
But as I said we have five houses on this water, and it bothers some, so I needed to go up the hill where the springs are and remove all the springs from the main pipe, except the main one, which should reduce the clay content some.
I went out to start my little four wheeler and of course it didn’t really want to start up, but after fiddling with it for awhile, I got it going and headed out to the springs.
This is the road that heads to the spring area.
I first went to the water tanks just to make sure everything was Ok with them and it was.
Our stainless steel water tanks, there are three, two behind the trees, sixteen feet high.
Just behind the tanks is this little gully that I had to walk a little ways up to switch a couple valves to keep one of the springs out of the system.
I turned the valves so the line coming from the right is dumped and not going into the tanks like the other line coming down the hill. It’s a shame to be dumping all this nice fresh spring water, but it didn’t cost anything.
After that, I needed to head up the hill further where the upper pipe is coming from near the main spring.
I didn’t get very far before I ran into this little tree across the road, which I had to move and several more too. I was trying to take it easy on my back, doing this.
Here I am just below the upper main spring which is actually out of the picture at the top, but there are some pipes just above the four wheeler, which I walked up to.
The big white pipe is a spring I tapped last summer which I’m letting run to clean it out and the other pipe that is running at full capacity is another spring that tends to be a bit on the clay side, so I disconnected it and let them both run free.
As the water supply slows down in the summer, I will hook these springs back into the system and they will be running crystal clear by that time.
Some sight seeing
As long as I was this high on the hill, I decided to go to the top and check out the view before heading back down the hill.
I traveled this road on the way to the top of the hill. This is mostly a redwood forest with other trees growing in it too.
When I got to the top of the hill, Guerneville had a bit of fog going up the river, but the sun was shining up here.
This is looking down to the small town of Guerneville, which is on the Russian River. The green field you can barely see down there is some of Korbel’s grapes, world famous Champaign makers, that are headquarters near Guerneville.
Transplanting an apricot tree
From there I went on home and decided it would be a good time to transplant an apricot tree I planted it in the wrong place last year. But first I wanted to get some mulch to mix into the new hole for the tree, so I got my wheel barrel and shovel and went across the county road to dig up some redwood mulch that had accumulated in a drainage ditch, which would also clean the drainage ditch out, so I was accomplishing two things at once which is always good. 
I dumped the mulch where I was going to plant the tree in my yard an went over to dig up the little apricot tree, which is just by the shovel, but hard to see.
The little tree came out without too much trouble. I mixed the mulch with the loamy soil and planted the little apricot tree right near where I had to cut one down that died. The little tree is just to the left of the shovel for those with bad eyes. :O) It’s a little tree.
By this time it was almost time for my physical therapy appointment so I got ready to go for that and was on my way.
The physical therapy went pretty good. After talking with my therapist and working with her, I’ve figured out that, not only did I mess up my back awhile ago, I then proceeded to mess up both my upper legs, as in using them way too much for my age and pulling and tearing some things. Ouch. That’s going to take some time to mend.
One more appointment with her and then I can soon be off to Quartzsite for a month or so of playing in the desert and it would be nice if my legs could do what I’m going to be demanding of them. If not, I’ll just have to take it easier, but that will be hard.
Nice day.