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There wasn’t much excitement this week. The neighbors were gone and it was Joyce and me with the cats and fowl. Even the mighty Tino was staying with his pal Cade at the Tversky’s. The only thing that might qualify as excitement was that I accidentally let the little guineas out. Because she was concerned about getting them put up at night, Joyce was going to wait until Chris was back to help her if she needed it. I helped her herd them into guinea tower the first evening and it wasn’t any problem. From then on she let them out herself each morning and they mostly put themselves up in the evening. They caught some grief from the big guineas and John Henry but by the end of the week they seem to have adjusted to life on SA and just go about their business.
It’s a little dispiriting how quickly an inch of rain can dry out. I guess that is because the ground is so dry. An inch of rain on ground that already holds some moisture might stick around awhile. It was scary how quickly the purslane grew after the rain but we’ve pulled quite a bit of it, Joyce to feed to her chickens and me to keep it from taking over, but after the ground began to dry it was easy to keep up with it. I still go around picking it but only worry about the bigger pieces. I figure we’ll turn the tide if we just keep it from reseeding itself.
Last weekend I applied some barley extract I’d purchased from a pond place that has been sending me their catalog to the lily pool. Genna once tried barley in a bag but the lily pond is so small I didn’t want to do that again. Didn’t seem to do much anyway. The extract, which is a liquid that is just poured into the water, is supposed to clear up the water. I think it works by absorbing some of the nutrients that encourage algae. So far I haven’t seen a dramatic difference but maybe over time it will improve the clarity. I did see one of the two small gold fish we put in the lily pool two or three months ago. In early spring when Jill and her crew were here, she and Kari cleaned out the lily pool and put a gold fish of the variety sold as food for other fish for each of the girls in it. Only one of those remain and it has grown considerably. The latest two are so small they are hard to see and I was afraid they didn’t make it since I hadn’t seen them since we put them in the pond. At least one of the two has survived so far though. Chris and Jill went together and got me the pond vacuum I had on my wish list for my birthday. I’ve been using a pump to take some of the crud out but it only works by pumping out the water in general so I would stir up the muck so some of it would get pumped out. If there was much muck it tended to clog the pump. I’m hoping this vacuum will do a better job and look forward to trying it out.
I finally broke down and started watering the junipers on the perimeter. The ones on the east side of the pasture in particular are in bad shape. One died completely and a couple more don’t have much green left on them. One by one I’ve been giving them a deep soaking, which means I have to run a hose to them. Time will tell whether it makes any difference.