by CJ | Nov 9, 2010 | Journal
She’s taken to her bed and is reading and sleeping and having food and reading and sleeping. Overdue, I think. She’s been so tired. I’m trying to work, but it’s a sleepy sort of day. The light-alarm system is working well: both of us are waking...
by CJ | Nov 9, 2010 | Journal
She’s taken to her bed and is reading and sleeping and having food and reading and sleeping. Overdue, I think. She’s been so tired. I’m trying to work, but it’s a sleepy sort of day. The light-alarm system is working well: both of us are waking...
by CJ | Oct 12, 2010 | Journal
Breakfast on the patio was nippy this morning. The pond is frothing up islands of white foam—lest you think picaresque, it’s dead bacteria, dying off from the chill, as the summer bacteria give up. The koi were all resting deep this morning, not interested...
by CJ | Jul 28, 2010 | Journal
Live and learn! We now have very little green algae: we have a barley-based clarifier and a type of bacteria-based cleanup stuff normally sold for small lakes: I use it by the half-ounce weekly, and another dose of a different bacterial cocktail once monthly, and...
by CJ | Jul 17, 2010 | Journal
It takes me a while to recover my stride after a diversion. Thank goodness for outlines. We were, for one thing, diverted by a spate of really cool weather, making it foolish to wait to do certain outdoor jobs which would have to be done in potential 100 degree...
by CJ | Jul 5, 2010 | Journal
I hope this is the solution to the pond problems. It’s a killer unit. Literally. It’s sposed to kill algae, by exploding their cells. It’ll do in some of our beneficial bacteria, but we can add more. I want to see the fish. I got the unit, saw the 1...
by CJ | Jun 12, 2010 | Journal
We had told ourselves that we were going to get two of the ‘higher-bred’ fishes from our new pond supply place—we’d gotten our first koi, expecting that we’d lose some to infant mortality, by buying a random batch from a feed...
by CJ | Jun 6, 2010 | Journal
according to the weather bureau. It’s raining again, and looks to rain all week. I just cleaned the pond filter yet again—the hyacinth isn’t growing, because we’re in perpetual overcast (with small intermissions)…so I built a pot filter....
by CJ | May 27, 2010 | Journal
Of the many pleasures of our garden, the gentle NW spring days are one of the greatest. It rains…but this morning we threw towels onto the fabric seats of our patio set and had breakfast (softboiled egg in spaceman-with-helmet egg cup) on our flower plates with...
by CJ | May 20, 2010 | Journal
It’s going to freeze tonight. Those of you who know what we’ve been doing, planting flowers and shrubs and the like, we are just floored. We got a huge tub and put the water hyacinth in it. We hauled in all the plants that aren’t in the ground....
by CJ | May 17, 2010 | Journal
She buys 3 more azaleas, with two not yet planted. And it’s known what I plant dies, so she wants to do it. We’re idiots. But she wants rhodies and azaleas so badly, and we now know what’s happened with the defunct ones. Turns out our water is...
by CJ | May 15, 2010 | Journal
I think it’s the shoveling and raking: but she is in acute misery. A day on muscle relaxant, and she’s still having spasms—something about planting: a dogwood, a magnolia, 2 rhododendrons, an azalea, pulling weeds from the entire garden path (about...
