Journey from dining room to fish room.

[Oldspartan]

After two canceled surgeries due to her cardiologist having questions, Linda finally had her reverse shoulder procedure last week. The incision size was a major surprise to say the least. The surgeon, or should I call him the rebuilder, says the procedure went very well. Currently she wears a funky looking cast with a large pillow attached to help support the arm. Last night she removed it to sleep, and today she only used it when doing the PT.

All tanks lost a water change during the period. Today I did smallish water changes on all tanks with the exception of the ones that were scheduled for today. They received generous water changes and light vacuuming. The changes took most of the day because I needed more water than the heater could provide at one time.

Near tragedy in the pond. The past two days we had very strong winds 25 MPH and gusts that night have hit 50MPH. Thunder and lightning too. Our large fountain dislodged from its mooring and drifted to the side of the pond spewing water to the outside. I noticed it Sunday. Anyway, about a third of the water was gone. I disconnected the fountain from power and decided to let the artesian flow refill the pond. It has regained its volume and is again overflowing to the bog and dry riverbed. All is well and it could have been much worse.

Linda is thrilled with her chicks. They are currently in a brooder on the porch but will be moved to the coop this upcoming weekend. One of the Leghorns and two of Plymouths expired. We will have fresh eggs in about 6 - 7 months. Most of the Plymouths will be raised to 6 to 7 pound then into the freezer. I will have to dust off the chicken plucker before fall.

We now have two pairs of Angel Fish and three loners. We will be keeping the pairs and trading in the three loners shortly. Tomorrow the female Veiltail Betta will be put in with the male. Linda will be staring at that tank all day I imagine.

Next up -- My back. Paperwork has been sent to the imaging joint, and I have an appointment for June 4th (if I remember right). I am expecting surgery before the year is out. I will soldier thru till late fall however.

 

[Oldspartan]

My best wishes to Linda. The post op PT is just as important as the surgical procedure. Be a good coach.

The PT is a bit strange. It is her sitting with her arm hanging and doing pendulums and circles. No therapist involved. My SIL, is a PT lady says this is the norm for reverse shoulder procedures.

My job is to encourage her to grit her teeth and endure the pain while doing these exercises several times daily.

 

[Oldspartan]

Bit behind with the pond but caught up with the inside tanks. Been a whirlwind around here the past three weeks.

The fish tanks are all in good shape, generally O Ammonia (all), o Nitrite, (all), and anywhere from a low of 5 to a high of 40 Nitrate. Linda tested all tanks this morning. I am not happy with the 29 gallon with the 40 Nitrate and did an unscheduled 15-gallon water change together with a very deep vacuum. The water was very dingy and was carted to flower beds by the front door. I am guessing the florals liked the water better than the fish. Will do the same Wednesday on that tank then put it back into rotation.

The pond plants are thriving. cattails shoulder high, Pompas to my knees, Lillies all growing well. The butterfly plants are emerging as are most everything else.

Tomorrow a friend is bringing his dump trailer over for me to borrow. I will be hauling 2.5-to-3-yard loads of pea gravel most of the day and putting them into a big pile. I am going to gravel the entire 36 by 30 area that we planted the new apple trees in and add a pair of pears to the mix. All the trees are semi dwarf the better for our old bones to harvest from. Bringing the gravel to the little orchard will be labor intensive because I cannot get any real equipment to it and will be using a lawn tractor and small cart. Lots of banjo work then combing with the steel garden rake. I have arranged for some help with that later in the week if it does not rain. The weekend if it does. I am hopeful it will not be the weekend because my brother and I are planning a day of striper fishing down by Troy. The bait fish arrived, and the Stripers have followed them. Big fish and great fun.

I want to get this gravel work done in anticipation of my back repair. The Ortho people called and have scheduled an appointment for me June 10th to discuss my MRI and alternatives. They lean toward surgery but I want to hear all options. I have done some research on the NET, fully aware the NET is a dangerous place to learn about such things when one has no background. There is a procedure called MILD that I am hopeful I am a good candidate for. It is minimally invasive, appears to be tailor made, and has a short recovery period. We will see. If a procedure is more invasive with a longer recovery period, I may decide to put it off till mid fall. I hate the thought of losing a whole summer to rehab. Again, we will see. Linda is doing very well and should be at least mostly recovered by the time any procedure is done to me. At least one of us has to be healthy enough to keep this place chugging along.

The birth control is working swimmingly in the pond. We have exactly zero babies that I can see, and our little Perch is growing well. The tadpoles are also much reduced from last year. The machete has reduced the snake population and the biggest predatory issue we have is an occasional rabbit that Buster and Precious enjoy chasing. We do have a new resident though. A smallish mud turtle has made a home in the bog for now. Pretty cool, so long as it remains just one.

 

[Oldspartan]

Alex the Woodcutter, who has become a fast friend, stopped by just as I finished hauling gravel yesterday. He is cutting some locust on my neighbor's wood lot to make into fence posts. He dropped of some beef and pig hearts as well as two beef tongues and several livers. We use these to make dog food. He would not take any money so we will save about 75 - 90 bucks. He and I sat in the pond house and had a couple mugs of my Brown Ale while solving all the world's problems.

Today I am pulling the waterfall pump and replacing it with an even bigger pump I picked up at an auction. The new pump, and it is brand new, was a great buy. The capacity is 10,000 GPH at zero lift. I expect the 5-foot lift it will be working at will be about 7000 GPH, a 40% increase in net volume. Before firing it up I am going to seal the rocks on the edges of the falls to create a tighter funnel effect. This will be the third pump I have used as I experiment with water volume over the waterfall chase. It is possible I will need to widen the throat at the receiving pool at the top of the "hill" to prevent overflow, not difficult and there is enough liner under the rocks to do so.

I through a small and short bench together for Linda a few days ago. She can use it to sit while working on her flower beds, Flip it over and it becomes a kneeling platform complete with a foam filled pad. She should be able to work her wonders using only one arm now, and it will still be useful when the other wing becomes useful.

Today will be the last of a nice three-day run of decent working weather. The window will close late this afternoon, and the monsoons will return through Saturday afternoon.

The inside tanks are doing fine and the fish room has become our go to room for morning coffee and "break" times. It is also my getaway as a reading nook.

 

[Oldspartan]

Had to pull the new bigger WF pump. It overwhelmed the small water pocket at the top of the waterfall. I will, later in the year, expand the pocket and widen the mouth. Rather than throttling the new pump down I replaced it with the previous edition. All is good again.

Blanket weed issues in the pond. I am addressing the problem manually for now.

Last year we were overrun with baby fish in the pond. This year it is not a problem due to the introduction of a predator fish.

I have finally caught up with mowing, whacking, weeding, and other various outdoor chores. We do not participate in no mow May due to tick issues. If the grasses grow the ticks infiltrate. We have allowed a patch to overgrow in a far corner. That will get a haircut this weekend. I checked it for ticks today by dragging a white sheet slowly through it. Ticks galore. I will spray the area as I mow while shouting death to ticks.

Linda appreciated her kneeling bench while doing some weeding around flower beds. It is a tool I should have built her years ago -- so I have been told. Just never gave it a moment's thought.

About half the gravel has been put in the new mini orchard. Should finish this week. My helper was no help so this is going slower than I would like. The extra gravel will be used pond side to fill in between the larger rocks for a more natural look. Will let some "drip out" around the edges and top with some strategically placed cobbles.

Linda is still handicapped by her shoulder and the pain is not subsiding. She is getting very impatient with the healing process. I keep telling her not to worry and she will soon be a southpaw.

 

[gwand]

Had to pull the new bigger WF pump. It overwhelmed the small water pocket at the top of the waterfall. I will, later in the year, expand the pocket and widen the mouth. Rather than throttling the new pump down I replaced it with the previous edition. All is good again.

Blanket weed issues in the pond. I am addressing the problem manually for now.

Last year we were overrun with baby fish in the pond. This year it is not a problem due to the introduction of a predator fish.

I have finally caught up with mowing, whacking, weeding, and other various outdoor chores. We do not participate in no mow May due to tick issues. If the grasses grow the ticks infiltrate. We have allowed a patch to overgrow in a far corner. That will get a haircut this weekend. I checked it for ticks today by dragging a white sheet slowly through it. Ticks galore. I will spray the area as I mow while shouting death to ticks.

Linda appreciated her kneeling bench while doing some weeding around flower beds. It is a tool I should have built her years ago -- so I have been told. Just never gave it a moment's thought.

About half the gravel has been put in the new mini orchard. Should finish this week. My helper was no help so this is going slower than I would like. The extra gravel will be used pond side to fill in between the larger rocks for a more natural look. Will let some "drip out" around the edges and top with some strategically placed cobbles.

Linda is still handicapped by her shoulder and the pain is not subsiding. She is getting very impatient with the healing process. I keep telling her not to worry and she will soon be a southpaw.

Donkey skin secretion that repels deer ticks shows promise as natural alternative to DEET

University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers have made a promising discovery that could lead to the development of a natural and effective tick repellent. They have shown that a naturally occurring compound secreted by the skin of donkeys effectively repels adult Ixodes scapularis ticks—the...

phys.org

 

[Oldspartan]

I dropped a sample of the bamboo to the Cooperative last Friday. They were intrigued by my "finding". It would be very cool if something was developed to repel ticks from bamboo. It is a scourge so planting it is not an answer but perhaps a chemical in the plant can be utilized. The tick issue up here is turning deadly with a couple of new afflictions now raring their ugly heads.

The next phase of what I now call the pond build is coming along. A concrete slab has been poured, 8 by 10 foot. This was done by mixing cement in a wheel barrel. Quickcrete was used because I could not get sand and stone to the area without tearing out landscaping. So one wheel barrel at a time mixed by hand. The cement was tinted a terra cotta color. The next couple of days will be spent assembling the accoutrements I built in the shop, adding plumbing and electrical. Linda picked up a stainless-steel kitchen sink at a thrift store, and we purchased a small flattop Blackstone grill. These will be dropped into a cement countertop that will be built tomorrow. We also have a smallish refrigerator, a couple sizes larger than a dorm style one, that will go inside the cabinets at about waist level A cement block smoker will be the final piece but that will be next week.

The area around the summer kitchen has been planted with fruit trees in a heart shape pattern and then covered in pea stone. There are five trees total, and they have established nicely so far. The backdrop is a pallet fence topped with lattice that has a Wisteria plant. The Wisteria should cover the entire backdrop in a year or two. Behind the fence will be two Japanese red weeping maple trees. They will be planted in the early fall. Properly trimmed their canopy will be all that is visible.

The pond has a blanket weed problem that we are finally winning the war with. It has been a month-long battle. The stuff has fouled pump and sprinklers, clogged the waterfall, and overwhelmed the bio-filter. I had to resort to chemical treatment which exasperated some of the clogging at times. The fish did not care for the treatments, but they survived intact -- so far. Unsure of long-term effects though.

 

[Oldspartan]

We had 2 1/2 days of nonstop rain. Finally stopped late last night.

Took a walk down the hill to the bottom land to check on Linda's grain experiment. Both plots are doing very well. One will be ready for cutting a drying about the first of July and the second at the end of July. Afterwards I worked a bit with the pea stone and should have that job completed by Saturday. Most of Linda's flower beds are now pretty much weed proof. In each one I raked back her mulch cover, laid down cardboard, put down some well-rotted manure, reapplied her mulch, laid some Holland blocks in strategic location in each bed and then put down an 1 1/2 inch of pea stone. The stone was brought to the height of the Holland block which I then removed and backfilled the spaces.

Whew -- Writing that made me feel it was a monumental job. It was not and the written description was probably more difficult than the actual work.

I still have about a ton of the pea stone left and have decided to scatter it at the base of the rocks bordering the pond. I think, if I pay attention to detail, doing so will increase the natural appearance of the "shoreline". Any extra can be spread into low spots in the driveway. I will be glad to see the pile gone.

The Perch has been a busy predator. There are no fry, goldfish or minnow in the pond. Tadpoles are also pretty scarce in the main pond but are plentiful in the overflow pond. The Heron no longer prowls the pond yard and is back where it belongs at a fairly large pool in the Snookill, a safe distance away. He became tired if being painted with a paintball gun I suppose. The algae problem was beaten back with a combination of hand and chemical control. Floating plants, marginals, and bog are doing well and are showing splashes of yellow, purple, and red colors amidst their greenery. The pond is now serene and a special place to lounge about.

The bird garden that surrounds the bog has surprised us with two Baltimore Orioles. Linda is keeping them happy with orange partitions on a couple of spikes. The Hummingbirds have returned, as have the Cattails, and red birds. Of course, the woodpeckers, various Finches, Chickadees, and Doves never left. The music coming from that area and the splash of waterfall and fountain have made the area an amazing retreat.

The summer kitchen needs to be finished. It is usable but still needs completion so that it becomes another part of the general ambiance of the pond and mini orchard space. When that is complete the area is complete, a three-and-a-half-year project.

Interestingly the fireflies have returned. I have not seen them for a few years, and they were cool to watch last night. I hope they are a good omen for the health of the little oasis.

A lot of physical labor out there as well as in the fish room that is now for all practical purpose over with. I am glad but also wistful and antsy thinking, what can we do next. Whatever we decide to do will be far less labor intensive.