although it wasn’t very warm I went out and worked in the garden for an hour or so…
most of that time was spent weaving the Virginia creeper into the lattice along the garage and removing bits that were in the wrong places… it will be interesting to see if this makes any difference to how it looks throughout the summer as I’ve not done this before…
mixed up eggshells and some leaves with the soil that we picked up the other day although I didn’t put it into any planters yet…
moved a floating basket from one pond to the other and added a tiny piece of floating water lily to anchor it… no idea if it will grow in this, but will watch and see…
the sun was out for a portion of the time… I still needed a light jacket, but sure enjoyed being outside;-)…
began with a hot tub in the sunshine… used it the very first time thirteen years ago on Mother’s Day, so it seemed like an excellent way to start the day…
after breakfast, I raked up some of the leaves… well, it took a good portion of the day, as there were many reading breaks… it is a bit early, but after cleaning out the pond, I wasn’t too thrilled with all of the leaves blowing into it, lol… they went into a paper bag and I am hoping that any critters living in them will be able to escape from said bag…
even though there is no birdseed out, the white-throated sparrows have been singing all day, as they, the house sparrows and the Harris’s sparrow I spotted, wandered the freshly raked grass looking for goodies…
I was contemplating bringing out the goldfish, but think I will wait for some help catching them, lol…
there were numerous phone calls as well as texts reminding me of the special people in my life…
to top it all off, a bunny came and sat with me for about fifteen minutes…
it has been a long, but productive, day and the weather has been amazing, around 22 Celsius…
I brought out the pump for the pond, hooked it up to a different hose and used it to empty the water… it doesn’t take too long with the big hose…
thanks to a great idea that my grandson had last year, I used the wet vac to suck up leaves and debris from the bottom… eventually I put on my water shoes, climbed in and got the last bits out…
I attached the pump to the waterfall and placed all the rocks back to hide it, hoping that there wouldn’t be any leakage, lol…
then ran the hose across the garden and filled the pond up… it took just over an hour and I finally plugged in and turned the pump on…
and it worked;-)… with no leaks…
we also got the hammock out and assembled, put up three umbrellas, and moved two of the chairs for the back deck out from the shed…
today, my grandson came over and we went to the fish store to pick up food for the goldfish and a couple of filters for the pumps… you read that right… I went shopping;-)…
I ended up buying a ginormous pail of fish food but it is way more cost effective this way… I will fill a number of ziplock bags and pop them into the freezer… won’t be needing more for quite some time, lol…
I also picked up some feeder-fish…
not that I needed more fish, but they were a great size – about the same as the babies when they came into the house in the fall… and were only a dollar each;-)…
there will be a couple of big schools this summer…
I went out before it really got going to clear the snow in front of the patio door…
for the last week or so it has been stuck and only opened about six inches…
seemed like a good plan to deal with it before the rain, in case it freezes into ice back there…
took quite a while and a lot of effort to get the snow moved… it was much heavier and had more chunks in it… the hill next to the deck is high again, so I’ve had to walk along the path before throwing the snow into the garden…
but, got it done… there is still tons of snow on the deck although the rain and wind and warmer weather have certainly melted some of it…
it will be interesting to see how it is going to melt, or whether there will be more than one pond in the space..
I have been working on the fish condo for weeks now… spent a good portion of a day cleaning the fish tank… lots of scrubbing and emptying…
I researched a second tank and we went out and got the tank and two pumps so that they were on the ends as opposed to the back of the tanks…
after numerous measurements, we set the new tank up on the counter along the North wall of the dining room… then the bottom was filled with rocks and water and the new pump set up… this tank will be for the baby fish as the other tank won’t be able to hold all of the fish…
I worked with my grandson and we were able to move the big tank to the spot beside the small tank… it looks good there and it almost appears like one single very long tank…
after putting river rocks in it, I ran the hose from the outside tap through the house and was able to fill it up in nine minutes… it probably took me that long to fill the small one as I used a pail and walked back and forth to the kitchen sink for that one, lol…
had a bit of an issue with the pump as there wasn’t quite enough room in the large tank for it on the edge, but we were able to remove a piece of plastic and now it fits perfectly…
once the water was in and circulating for a few days we began catching the fish… we have been at it for quite a while… we started on October 22nd and today I think we caught the last one… I had to break ice for the last few collections, lol…
it was quite a process because since about the middle of October the water has been brown as leaves have fallen into it so it has made spotting fish difficult…
we also brought in some of the water lilies, which hopefully will survive until next spring when they can go back into the pond…
the tanks look great and I am pleased with all of our work…
herbiggirlpants 