17 Thursday Jul 2025
Posted in business, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
APC, big girl pants, blessed, koi, learning, moments, nature, pond, professionals, The Leaf, tropical biome, water, widow
had a lovely few minutes in the Tropical Biome watching one of the animal care professionals feeding the koi ;-)…
they check on the fish a few times each day to feed, as well as count, them and do a quick overview to make sure they are all doing well…
it is always great to spend a few minutes and learn something new at each opportunity;-)…
05 Saturday Jul 2025
Posted in business, garden, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, birds, blessed, English Garden, frogs, garden, Leo Mol Garden, lily pond, moments, nature, pond, volunteer, walk, water, water lilies, weather, widow, yellow warblers
spent a morning in the English Gardens…
before I started my shift, I took photos of the water lilies and frogs in the Leo Mol lily pond…
as a volunteer, I walked around welcoming visitors, taking photos for them, and visiting with some of the guests…
I also saw many birds, particularly yellow warblers, that were flitting through the garden…
as I was leaving, it was great fun to watch a staff person catching frogs from the water lily pond and then moving them to the bigger, natural pond…
there was concern that the shallow water in the lily pond could be a detriment to their health on these hot days…
glad I got my photos when I did;-)…
12 Thursday Jun 2025
Posted in garden, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, clover, flowerbed, garden, grass, happy, Hilda the Gardener, lily of the valley, moments, nature, plants, poppies, tidy, water, weather, widow
Hilda the Gardener spent a few hours on Wednesday afternoon tidying up the garden…
now that the poppies are finished blooming, she removed the ones that were in the walkway and cut back the ones in the flowerbed…
the other plants in that bed are visible and will likely spread out a bit more…
she also removed the lily of the valley from a section of the side garden…
the columbine are taking over but it looks fabulous… and the peas are moving up the arch at an astounding speed…
everything is doing well, including the clover and grass that we put down a few weeks ago…
I will be very happy when I don’t have to water it every day, lol…
01 Sunday Jun 2025
Posted in business, family, garden, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, deck, family, garden, grandson, leak, moments, muscle, pond, problem, puddling, repair, shopping, water, weather, widow
the pond has continued to leak but we thought we had the problem figured out…
water seemed to be puddling under a UV clarifier which was installed in the pond at the beginning, but which never accomplished its job and has been unplugged for a number of years…
we picked up a piece to connect the two hoses together and with a lot of cutting and muscle, were able to disconnect it entirely… so happy, thinking the problem had been solved…
turned the pump back on and watched water still coming out where the hose goes under blocks and the deck…
so, the issue appears to be that the six or seven feet of hose from the pump to the waterfall needs to be replaced… we are considering ways to accomplish this, which may involve removing a good sized piece of the deck to get at it, sigh…
and so it goes…
25 Sunday May 2025
Posted in business, garden, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, clover, cushions, garden, grass, moments, nature, raked, seed, sprinkler, water, watered, weather, widow
early this week the garden was aerated with a huge machine…
watching the young man muscle it around the space made it clear how big and heavy the machine was…
a few days later, after watering the grass to soften it, clover and grass seed was scattered…
then the spots that weren’t doing well were raked and levelled out…
the new rake worked beautifully… the old one had separated quite a while ago, but it was likely thirty or forty years old, lol…
since then the grass has been watered daily to encourage the seed to take…
all of the cushions are put away before the watering begins…
it is a process, as the sprinkler has to be moved five or six times to ensure every bit gets a good soaking;-)…
fingers crossed that it does better this year than it did last year…
12 Monday May 2025
Posted in business, family, garden, health, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, big job, blessed, garden, housemate, moments, nature, picked, pond, pumps, rocks, water, weather, wetvac, widow
started working on the pond on May 3rd… it is a big job…
brought out the pond pump and removed as much water as possible… aimed the hose towards the cedars to give them a good soaking…
the waterfall area has to be done separately, after I removed the two floating planters…
then I left it so that the leaves and twigs could dry out a bit before removing them…
the next day, the wetvac came out and it removed quite a few leaves, and a few rocks, lol…
next I got into the pond and picked out the majority of the last leaves in the dry areas… that evening, my housemate finished draining the waterfall area and cleaned up debris from the bottom of the pond…
on the 9th, we obtained the foam to fill the spaces between the rocks so the fish won’t be able to hide when we are trying to catch them in the fall, lol…
rearranging and foaming the rocks took two days of concentrated work and it was hot out…
Sunday, May 11, the pumps were in, the necessary rocks have been foamed, a few flower pots have been added for fish to hide in and now we wait for the foam to cure so the water can go in…
this afternoon the pond was filled, woohoo… excited to watch the first of the water enter, using a dedicated hose which goes right into it… took an hour and a half to fill the bottom portion and just under thirty minutes to fill the waterfall area… that had to be done with the regular hose, as it isn’t connected to the lower area unless the waterfall is running…
it will be a few weeks of it running before the fish make their way from the winter condo;-)…
unfortunately, the plugs on the post near the pond are not working, so for now I am using an extension cord to provide electricity to the two pond pumps… always something, lol…
so happy to hear it running;-)…
28 Monday Apr 2025
Posted in business, garden, health, life, moments, retirement, technology, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, connected, empty and fill, filter, garden, hot tub, moments, pump, Technology, time, water, weather, widow
it was time to change the water and filter in the hot tub…
once I brought out the pump and connected it to the hose, I started the process at 10:20 am… twelve minutes later the pump came out and I emptied the last little bit of water with a pail and cloth… that took another twenty minutes…
once the new filter was in, I brought out the hose from the basement, repaired a piece of it, and hooked it back up to the outside tap…
filling the tub took about an hour and a half and just after 1 pm, the electricity was back on and the heating up process began…
it took just over a day to heat to 103°C…
18 Friday Apr 2025
Posted in life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, cleaning, clogging, fish, glass, goldfish, moments, nature, pumps, tank, water, widow
Wednesday, I spent time cleaning two of the pumps…
Thursday was glass cleaning day, lol…
luckily it didn’t take too long and now the tanks look so much better;-)…
seems to me the pumps are clogging up more quickly than previously;-(…
16 Sunday Mar 2025
Posted in health, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, clean, fish, fishtanks, moments, nature, project, pumps, top up, water, widow
Friday’s project was to clean out the pumps on each of the three fishtanks…
it always slips down towards the bottom of the list, but once I get going, it isn’t that difficult, and doesn’t take that long either…
usually I only do one or two, but this time I did all of them at the same time…
the pumps are now running beautifully, and I topped up the water in each one… usually I do the topping up on Mondays, but was just a bit sooner this time;-)…
14 Friday Mar 2025
Posted in life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized
Tags
accident, big girl pants, blessed, buds, flowers, moments, nature, orchids, plants, water, widow
I’ve been trying something new with my orchids…
the ones in the den have been getting buds and have also been sitting in water, sort of by accident, lol, so I decided to try that for all the other ones…
we will see what happens…
herbiggirlpants 