New House Blog: Episode LCVIII - Water And Fire(works)

Happy Belated 4th of July to all of you blog readers out there.  And what a 4th of July it was for us in our New House.  Since this year's 4th was the first 4th we've experienced in our New House we didn't quite know what to expect; we only knew that one of our neighbors was planning to light off a few fireworks at some point in the night.  This information was obtained by Bish whilst he was talking with....  Well, more on that later.  For now let's just say that from the time we got home from supper on the 4th, at around 9pm (due in large part to very slow service at our local Chile's restaurant), to past midnight we heard a seemingly constant barrage of noise.  Explody, boomy noises permeated the air for more than three hours.  Mostly they were far off booms and explosions, but their constant presence in the background was unexpected.  More details on that later.  First, let's get the watery part of this Episode out of the way so that we can get back to talking about the explody sights and sounds from our 4th of July night.

Water

The time had come to remove the extraneous plumbing from the front yard hose hook-up.  It was a mess of L-bends, anti-backflow devices, superfluous spigots, and PVC.  We believe that most, or all, of the extraneous plumbing was left over from a now-defunct sprinkler system (said sprinklers were removed in this Episode) and a now-non-existent water softener system.

 Look at all of that extra, superfluous, and unnecessary plumbing.

What an over-complicated, overly-complex mess!












All of that extra superfluousness has been removed and replaced by a brand new 1/4-turn spigot.

Look at that beautiful simplicity.  Some of the old parts can be seen in the background.  If you recall, the same exact type of spigot was first seen in this Episode in our laundry room.


Garden Update Interlude

Before we get to the exciting explosions we must interject a garden update interlude.  Our back yard garden is still doing well.  We are now actively harvesting some of its bounty, but some of its bounty is not quite harvest-ready yet.  So far we have partaken of onions, lettuce, radicchio, beet greens, and lemon cucumbers, which you can see below.

These are the first lemon cucumbers harvested from our eating garden.  The apple cucumbers, melons, beets, and potatoes are all still maturing.

 This is the back area of the garden.  As you can see, the melon plants have spread out quite a bit.  Also seen in this photo are the radicchio, beets, onions, potatoes, and catnip.

 This is another view of the radicchio, beets, and onions.  Also seen are the strawberries and a cucumber plant.

This is the front area of the garden.  Seen here are strawberries, two cucumber plants (which seem intent on taking over the entire garden), lettuce, and catnip.















Fireworks

It all started on the night of July 3.  A few medium-sized bangs had been heard from neighboring streets, and then KABOOM!  The big one.  It rattled windows and set of a car alarm.  And it came from just a few houses away on our street.  Well, I had to see what was going on and who had detonated this small artillery shell.  I walked outside and looked up the street to where a group of people was standing around.  I walked up to this group of 4 (or maybe 5) 20-something men and asked if they were the ones who initiated the unexpected eardrum assault.  They were the ones, and while I was talking to them one of them set off another firework - this one being the kind that shoots into the sky and explodes in a brilliant burst of color and light (and noise).  They were testing out two of their toys in preparation for the next night's festivities.  One of them, the only one slurring his speech, said that they were going to provide quite the show on the 4th of July.  I told them it was nice to meet them, and then I returned home and warned Becky of the noise to come.

On July 4th said neighbors were true to their word.  Sometime late at night, well after 9pm, they provided quite the neighborhood show.  And I'm not talking about the small stuff we used to play with as kids.  They weren't quite professional-grade, either - somewhere in-between, I think.  Despite it being technically illegal in San Jose to light off fireworks, we didn't see any real point in calling the Police, so we decided to enjoy the show and comfort the cats as best we could.  As it turned out, Satchmo was the most affected by the noise, and by the other various explody noises that night, and Miles hid under his chair much of the time; Daisy was rather blase about the whole thing.  I managed to capture some pictures of the event - some from the front yard and some from our upstairs balcony.

 This first set of photos was taken from the front yard.

 As you can see, the camera had trouble focusing on some of the bursts.

 Despite how it may appear, the fireworks were not actually shooting out of anyone's chimney.

 This next set shows what we saw (and heard) from the neighbors from our upstairs balcony.

In addition to seeing our neighbor's fireworks show, we were able to view (thanks to the flatness of Silicon Valley) several other fireworks displays in neighboring neighborhoods and surrounding areas.

 Look at that flat, low horizon.

For the record, and just in case any law-enforcement personnel are reading this, we do not know precisely which neighbor's house was the originator of the neighborhood fireworks display, nor do we remember any of the names of any of the people who may have been involved.

Bonus BYA Update

We conclude this Episode with a bonus Back Yard Arachaeology update.  While uprooting some unwanted foxtails along the front sidewalk, (As mentioned in this Episode I am including all of the yards under the blanket umbrella category of Back Yard Archaeology) I uncovered a rusty artifact - a pop rivet, of the type that would be used with the old rusted-out rivet gun first discussed in this Episode.  Here is a picture.  The glove is included to show scale.

Celebrate the independence of your nation by blowing up a small part of it.
   bIsh