Cruising the blogs

I've been cruising the blogs again and getting a bit depressed looking at all the great produce everyone seems to be getting. Out here the harvest has been pitiful to say the least. Below is the tomato haul for the week, barely enough for a sandwich. But at least we have had a few. My neighbour though, has ripped his plants out in disgust and he's a gardener that could give Peter Cundall a run for his money.

This time of year four years ago we where swimming in tomatoes, we had tomatoes for drying, sauces and bottling. We had tomato's coming out our ears.

OK, that's the whinge out of the way now on to the good stuff. We had truckloads of rain late last week, around 65mm in fact. As well as giving us a heap of catheads it perked the garden up no end and, it looks like we will get a bit more before this week's done. The last couple of days have been pretty steamy, downright tropical in fact. And just like the tropics, today around noon the cumulus started building, so with a bit of luck we will get a bit of a storm that will wet us down again.

 

In other news from the boonies the washing machine is back in action after a couple of weeks resting up. It started making quite a bit of racket, and initial thoughts where it was bad news, it's long out of warranty and a three hour round trip to the nearest repairer. On closer inspection it turned out to be the pump, no big deal at all really, a job I could tackle myself. Our machine is a Fisher & Paykel, Smart Drive GW612 and the pump is a simple bayonet mount unit. The pump and other parts for most machines on the market are here if anyone is looking for them. I ordered my pump from here and received reasonably good service.

If anyone needs to tackle this job it is fairly straightforward. The procedure is as follows. First disconnect the machine from the wall (very important, both power and water) and pull it out so that it can be tipped back or, lift it on to a couple of saw horses. You need to access the pump from underneath (the only practical way in). Disconnect the two wires from the pump, flip the retaining clip back and twist the unit so that it can drop free. Put the new pump in and connect the wires again, now you're good to go. The bayonet mount pump seems to be a standard unit in the Fisher & Paykel top loaders so this repair is a reasonably easy home job .