Finally A Dishwasher!

Dishwasher After 9 Months!
Once we moved here and were hand-washing dishes as a normal practice, I realized how much I missed having a dishwasher. Then it became normal and I still wanted a dishwasher, but started to forget how convenient they were. But now that I have one again, I am excited! We did not wait to have it enclosed with a counter before we started using it! I am not sure why the video below demands to be sideways, but I am putting it here anyways so you can understand just how loud it is! We can't even hear each other when we talk! But, I was very happy that our garage sale dishwasher worked!!!! It has taken a ton of work to get to this point. The kitchen had no area for the dishwasher, we had to move the gas stove, move the gas line, drill holes to get water to the dishwasher, fill holes where the gas line used to be, add a water pump to our house line so that we had enough water pressure....a ton of other projects had to be done first!!!

Next, we realized we needed a counter-weight on it until we figured out a more permanent solution. We used a case of beer, which by the way, did not initally work and we had an entire case of broken beer bottles on the floor. It took many hours of sweeping, mopping and picking up all of the pieces. My husband decided that I would be more careful if he put my Cokes on it, haha. Okay, so he was right, the Cokes have been on there a week and it has been working.

DishSoap
I did not find any dishwasher detergent in town the first week. Eventually, I found it in the city of David, but to begin with, I used a multi-purpose detergent. I found a bag that claims to clean plates, clothes, kitchens...it turns out that this suds up too much and is not so good in dishwashers, but it did verify if we did or did not have any leaks!

Dogs
Our 2 dogs could not be more different. As litter mates, one might assume they would have a few qualities that were similar, but not these 2! One is the relaxed dog that loves hugs and follows rules, the other is always guarding and has a stubborn streak. The pictures below show the dogs during their morning naps. We were told that the dogs went chasing after an ocelot. I am sure the one dog wanted to be friends with it until his sister demanded that he follow her lead.

Caterpillars and Bees
I had just put Peet Moss around the fruit trees the day before my husband walked by one of the orange trees and noticed something odd. There were tons of pellets of waste on the ground, which he thought was very strange until he investigated the tree further and noticed the gathering of caterpillars. They were in a clump and there was a sticky slime holding them all together. This is certainly something that I never witnessed living in Oregon!

Then later as he was working on building a new counter for the dishwasher, the bees or paper-type wasps were building a new home inside the shop. With all of the wildlife around here, it never ceases to amaze me at how fast these groups of living things can just appear!