The Cistern

This is the one part of the house I've never stepped foot in, never really seen until it finally dawned on me last week that I could get a picture of it with a digital camera held over the edge. When we bought the house twenty years ago this was filled with 4 feet of water and every bit of roof on this Dutch colonial had old half-round gutters draining into it where they weren't twisted out of shape.

The first summer we had drought conditions so we'd used most of the water by the time we did the tear-off of the roof (of course thereby breaking the drought) and hung new gutters with conventional downspouts.

The plan was to cut an entryway in the 5 1/2 foot high, 1 foot thick concrete wall and use the space as a root cellar but I've now accepted the fact that it ain't gonna happen. Maybe someday when I'm dead and gone, someone will actually use this again as intended and the fact that we never cut into it will turn out to be a good thing.