Tag Archives: store-bought bread

If All Else Fails. . .

30 Jan

. . .read the instructions.

For the last decade or so, The Squire has marched into semi-annual battle with the water filter. The bottom of the filter fits over a little nub in the bottom of the housing, and the top snugs up against a matching nub under the lid. You could hold the filter in place, but once you began to screw the entire fitting together, you simply had to move your fingers, and the water in the housing  would cause the filter to float loose from its moorings.

The last time we replaced the filter I suggested using store-bought white bread to brace it in place, on the theory the bread would break up and float away. It didn’t; instead, we had a lovely moldy green lump sitting in the housing.

The Squire went to the local Big Box and got a new filter, and he and I began the tedious process of installing it. When he took it out of the package a piece of paper floated to the floor, which I bent over to retrieve.

INSTRUCTIONS: To install the filter . . you put it in dry and then turn on the water. Took five minutes, if that.

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Cast Your Bread upon the Waters

16 Jan

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAChanging the water filter on our pump is a major undertaking, and probably the most frustrating thing to be done at The Rice Paddy.  The lines on both sides of the filter must be turned off, and then the housing must be unscrewed, and the old filter removed.

Now the fun starts. You have to fit the filter down onto a sort of peg at the bottom, fill the housing with water, and then screw the thing together with the top of the filter fitting onto a little nub at the top. The water makes the filter float, and it skitters sideways every time you try to screw it all back together.

Many years ago a friend had told me that when her husband had to repair a leak in their baseboard heating system, he put a small plug of store-bought white bread into either end of the repair. The bread kept the water back long enough to solder the leak, and once the system was turned back on, the bread dissolved.  So, we put bits of store-bought white bread around the filter to keep it from bouncing up, and it worked like a charm. We were both so pleased with our selves!

Until today, when we discovered a large blob of moldy green stuff bobbing like a boat in a storm, on top of the filter.

Yetch.

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Pushy, Pushy

8 May

We removed (caught) another snapping turtle day before yesterday, and thought we only had one left in the pond.

This evening Blazer and I went out to feed the fish, and there were two very impatient turtles literally hanging over the edge of the pond, waiting to be fed. Because they were halfway out of the water, I couldn’t throw bread to them, but had to find a small stick (a lilac branch, in this case) break it in half, and put a piece of bread on each one. Once both sticks were “loaded” I held them out and the turtles yanked the bread off. They will only eat store-bought white bread, and I have to use the crusts and the heels so the stuff won’t fall off the sticks. (The center of the bread gets thrown into the middle of the pond so the poor fish actually get to eat.)  I am not the sharpest crayon in the box, but this is as close as we get to “hand feeding” snapping turtles.

I squatted out there for about five minutes, poking food into two gaping maws, while Blazer hovered behind me. Some protector he is! I imagine it was like feeding twins, but most twins don’t have such sharp edges.

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