>still no photos, so here is another topic that is hard to photograph — water. we have started watering in the mornings, since the spring rain has tapered off. water has been not a struggle exactly, but not easy either. after our friends and i bought our land, a big water pipe was laid that went right through our place. it was kind of a bummer, but then again, we thought, it was water. well, as it turned out the water would not reach up to our house — gravity was working against us. well, our friend down the hill from us had a water pipe directly from our local water source, and for a while, we piggy backed on that pipe, but the problem with that was that if someone down the hill was using that water, we had none. so last summer, ali and i laid down our own pipe straight to the water source, using an “eye”, a small spring, that our neighbor had told us about.
the name of our town is ulupinar, which basically means, :”big spring”, and it is a place famous for its water. and the water is delicious. our water source is in a beautiful valley of plane trees. as you descend into the valley (it is about 10 minutes away from the house — we used to go there to wash our dishes), you can hear the sound of the water rushing. in the summer, it was our only source of cold water during the day, although in the heat of the summer (over 40 C) the walk sort of negated the cold water and the shade of the trees. when you get to the actual source itself, though, there are pipes everywhere — big fat ones, little skinny ones, black ones, blue ones, plastic ones, metal ones — up here, it is every man for himself where water is concerned. people gossip about the water pipes, help each other fix them, cadge pipes from one another. i never realized before, because i never had to think about it, how emotional an issue water is.
anyway, our saga continues to unfold, but i will save the details for some other time. what i really wanted to mention was that this morning ali started from the top of the garden and i started at the bottom. there was water in that big ugly pipe, so i used that to water, and was able to water all the way up to the greenhouse using that water. and it felt like a small victory, or maybe a bit like cheating, to use that water because we had done nothing to bring it to our land, we just happened to be able to get it this morning.