Inquiring minds


Sunrise over SA
Sunrise over SA (click to enlarge)

On the way to Petco last Sunday to buy a couple of fish for her birthday, li’l r asked me where I would be when she was my age.  Hmmm, how to answer that?  Slow roasting?  Celestial choir practice?  I took the easy way out and told her I would have gone to my, er, reward.  So then she asked where I would be when she was her mother’s age.  I told her most likely the same place.  I don’t know where those questions came from.

Speaking of fish, there seems to be a new crop of fingerlings in the aquarium.  Our population of marble mollies from the original three we bought when we set up the aquarium peaked at about 15 before collapsing to five.  Since then we’ve added other fish some of which have perished but the current combined population is 10 with the three li’l r and I added last Sunday.  Friday morning I was cleaning the aquarium and noticed a number of little black fish about four or five millimeters long.  The little mollies that were birthed or hatched previously were colorless when they were that size so I don’t know what variety these are.  Also, they actually get down into the gravel.  In vaccuming the aquarium I unearthed them, so to speak.  There may have been as many as half a dozen.

At the golfcourse Monday I saw a large hawk that may have been an osprey hanging around the pond they have there.  It had a light colored head and generally wasn’t colored like any hawk I’m used to seeing.  Without binoculars I couldn’t see it very clearly so it may have been something else but from a distance it fit the description of an osprey pretty close.

Sister Kathryn reports aiding a baby rat snake that couldn’t negotiate the curb.  A lot of people will kill any kind of snake out of hand so it’s a safe bet she gave it a new lease on life by “flicking” it up the curb.

Friday was a chilly, breezy day and K&C took advantage to organize a weenie roast.  By evening it was just about the right temperature to sit next to a fire and roast a weenie or, later, a marshmallow.  Barbara Howard joined us and we had a pleasant evening.  We wished Big Dave and the Wylie women could have been there with us.

Our water gardens got some attention this week.  I shucked off my shoes and socks and waded into the pond to pull cattails and pond grass.  The two were advancing from opposite ends of the main body of the pond gradually reducing the open water.  Early in the summer I made a good start at thinning out the cattails but they were recovering rapidly.  Over the winter they will die back leaving a lot of dead material in the pond.  That will increase the nutrients in the water which will encourage algae so it’s best to clear out the cattails and pond grass before winter.  I want a little of each and having pulled all the cattails and all but a fringe of pond grass along the bank on the east end of the pond.  I should be able to control the spread of both next year with a minimal amount of maintenance.  At least that’s the theory.  I also spent some time trying to reduce the muck in the lily pond.  The barely extract has worked marvelously to clear up the water but that makes also the crud visible.  It looks like dust and easily kicked up but settles out in less than a day.  It will take repeated vaccuming to get it down to an acceptable level but it won’t be long before the leaves start falling to add to the litter polluting the lily pool.  Even so, I’m hoping by next spring to have it in much better shape.  Again, I think minimal routine maintenance will be needed once the ecology is in balance.