I spent five glorious days with friends’ at their beach cottage…
the first thing I always do is jump out of the car and run down to be sure the beach and lake are still there, lol…
what a wonderful time it was… delicious food (that I didn’t have to prepare); wonderful conversations, stories, and laughter; listening to birds and the waves; lots of time on the beach and in the water; relaxing, reading and sleeping…
silly waterfall continues to leak so I am now turning it off at night…
it had been working perfectly until I fell in and messed it up…
the nights are much quieter…
between it and watering the grass every day my water bill is going to be a bit high, lol…
tonight as I was doing a final walk through, I heard running water and realized that water was pouring out of the neighbour’s hose… gave them a quick call and they were able to get it stopped…
my morning schedule is to put on the kettle for my tea, choose my Advent treat for the day, feed the fish, and prepare my breakfast…
when I get to the calendar, which is on top of the fish tank, the fish are running back and forth to make sure I know they are there… and starving...
I can practically hear them, lol… later in the day, they will rush over as I enter their space to see if they can convince me that they haven’t been fed…
it has been below zero for a number of days and I had not remembered to empty the rain barrel… a lot of water had frozen in it and it was too heavy for me to flip it…
today, the temperature went to double digits and I just went out and opened the tap… and the water is running freely…
tomorrow, when it is empty I will turn it over for the winter;-)…
this afternoon I spent three hours outside with the hot tub technicians while they emptied, moved, opened all eight panels, filled, found two small leaks, repaired them, emptied, replaced the panels, moved back, refilled and turned the tub on… it was cold and windy…
now waiting for the two days it will take to heat the water and hoping that this has fixed the problem…
since then I’ve been trying to warm up… finally, about half an hour ago – after five hours – I don’t need any additional blankets and have taken off my sweater…
have been having some problems with the hot tub leaking for quite some time, but wasn’t certain that the water wasn’t just evaporating with the hot weather we’d been having…
finally it was clear that there was a problem so I called up the company I deal with and made an appointment…
a fellow came out on Monday morning and discovered water dripping from a portion of the pump… he thought it would be about forty dollars for the part which needed to be replaced… he worked for well over an hour and then advised that the entire pump needed to be replaced because the new piece wouldn’t fit in properly as they are now made slightly differently…
we contacted a supplier and my son-in-law went and picked up the new one so that the repair person could return the next morning to hook it up…
sadly, that didn’t happen… I made numerous calls to the store and was advised that they would pass along the message, but no one came… finally I called and asked for an actual appointment so that someone would turn up…
two fellows turned up the next morning and set about installing the new pump… they also fixed the loose jets (with silicone) so they don’t keep shooting the water out of the tub when the water level goes down a bit…
they advised the silicone needed twenty-four hours to cure and that the tub should work fine after that….
cleaned it out and partially filled it to just below the jets and waited for the point where I could finish filling it and turn it on to heat up…
after I filled it up and turned it back on, the pump made noise but the water did not move… I called again and a few hours later the guys came back and fixed an airlock in the pump… then it started to heat up…
spent a good portion of the afternoon in the garden… I was particularly watching the birds as I thought I’d spotted a rose-breasted grosbeak at the feeder from inside the house…
it was a lovely time… lots of bird and fish watching…
one of the things I’ve noticed is that the waterfall sounds different depending on how clear the line is…
when there is no debris in it it is quiet…
when there is algae and the odd stick in it, the sound is much louder…
I usually have a large skewer behind it that I use to clean the waterfall mechanism, but it appears to be gone… wondering if a crow came by and took it, lol… today I used a twig that had come down from the elm tree next door…
herbiggirlpants 