well, party-boat. They have cruises out on Lake Coeur d’Alene, a little while out of reach of cell phones and with a nice lot of water and scenery round about. Good food and a nice sit on the upper deck for, yes, a three hour cruise. Jane and me and OSG. OSGuy was otherwise engaged or out of town.
Meanwhile we’re starting to do some things looking toward winter with the pond. We can report major success with our 10 water hyacinth plants (no, they won’t winter-over: they’ll freeze, and we’ll have to get new ones, but after the algae incident, we were willing, especially at the dollar a plant sale price. We put them in a floating ring like a hula hoop, and the water is so clear you can count Kenpachi’s whiskers.)
But the lilies—Jane got me 2 things for my birthday, 2 egg cups shaped like spacemen with removable helmet—a hoot! and a water lily. We also got some advice from the local pond expert on how to get them to winter-over in the pond and start properly next year.
Jane was the brave soul who got into the pond, risking the slippery bottom, while I ran around the outside providing rocks, buckets of rocks, and scissors to cut the Lowe’s-bought lilies out of their netting. We used large, medium and peagravel rock, and buried them in little rock pyramids. But the waterfall was running, so buckets full of rock went floating off. I snare them with the pool-net which we have on hand to fish leaves out of the pond, and herd them back to her; and then she needs the scissors…hmmm. Into the pool net they go, and she uses them, places them in the pool net and I return them to shore. We should have had pictures, but since both of us were busy, we didn’t have a spare hand for a camera.
But since I have never had any luck wintering-over bulbs or rhizomes that are out of the ground, we have high hopes this will be less fraught with accidents: a couple of our lilies grew to respectable size over the summer, and this new one I really don’t want to lose.
Besides that, the fish are now on an approaching-cold weather diet, of mostly wheat germ. The largest have put on 2″ this summer, and we want to be sure they go into the winter fat. The morning water temperature is pretty well 62 degrees, and once the water hits 58F we have to stop feeding them, shut down the pump (to avoid mixing their water with colder water), and install the heaters, one at the bottom, one floating. Then we just kind of wave at them daily until it freezes. Even if the water gets warmer, they say don’t feed them: you don’t want them to have food in their bellies during hibernation. So we’ll be undergoing fish-withdrawal once the weather cools.
We’re also getting rid of the weeds we once called cute. They are now rank, and needing to be pulled, along with random stalks of millet from the birdfeeder.
I’ve got the ending of the book in focus now. I know it sounds like I’m lazing along, but head-work is part of it, and I’ve had to get my focus back after all that’s gone on last month or so. So now I’ve got it.
Good to hear you got your dinner cruise! Hope the weather’s been lovely, and the forestfires minimal.
I have a friend with a pond. She keeps water hyacinths alive over the winter in a rubber tub in her basement. I haven’t seen the set up, but imagine grow lights of some kind are needed. Over the summer they multiple so much she is continually thinning the patch and throwing extras in the compost pile. Is it the pink flowering vetch that is taking over? Need something to complete with them. Myrtles, ajugas, lamium, chamomile or thyme perhaps? My Herman’s Pride lamium and myrtle are battling it out, and I’m at the point where I no longer need to mulch, just pull weeds occasionally. Avoid anything in the mint family or the so-called hardy kiwi, it’s obnoxious.
Back when I had water hyacinths, I wintered them a few times indoors, but sometimes they just seem to get picky and die. I used to be able to get new ones out of the “lagoon” in Fair Park in Dallas, where they evidently piled themselves up so thickly that some of the growing points were pushed underwater and survived mild winters. But at some point, they evidently were eradicated, and I haven’t found another source. Glad they helped your water quality!
My water lilies, growing in plastic tubs in the pool, have never had trouble overwintering. THen again, there’s not much ice on my pool of a winter — maybe a modest layer once or twice for a few days.
Belated birthday greetings!!
I’m glad you seem to find a way to keep the pond algae-free.
I’ve got the ending of the book in focus now.
Oh, good.
I know it sounds like I’m lazing along
Don’t be ridiculous. I cannot imagine any writer worth his salt sitting down each for the same amount of time and producing the same amount of words. It’s just not a mechanical task. Writing is a creative art, and that means some bits are easier than others, and every now and again you have to step back and think things through and at other times you get annoyed when you have to stop for meals and sleep.
sitting down each _day_. Sigh. And that needs to be ‘every day’, of course. Must proofread posts.
“40 foot” party boat? Ummmmm….wouldn’t you agree the Mish-an-Nock was just a *liiiiiitle* bit longer than 40 feet? Or is this another example of Tau Cetian math? My *kayak* is 14 feet!
From an older topic, keyboards. Been on the lookout for trackpoint devices. Lenovo just released a new keyboard that looks really nice. Might be good to get one just in case ! Nice looking keyboard.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/06/new-thinkpad-keyboard-features-crowdsourced-design-lower-price/
http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:item.detail?GroupID=38&Code=55Y9003¤t-category-id=E9ADAEB6787146E29B78400A33E7FE8A
That’s nice!
OSG, the America Cup races feature “12 meter yachts” but the boats are longer than 12 meters. They use some kind of fancy calculating that comes out to 12 meters, even if the hull is 45 feet long. Maybe we have to use a smaller base than decimals?
CJ, how deep is the pond? My mother’s pond is something like 30 inches deep and she hasn’t had any problems keeping the koi through a West Central Ohio winter for over 20 years. I think a couple of the fish in that pond are 20 years old, and other than the occasional raccoon or neighborhood cat, there haven’t been any predators around. I think she’s lost one fish over the years, but that might have been a miscount.
😆 Drake’s “Golden Hind” was 75 feet long. I thought I was giving the Mishnanock a bit. And the Golden Hind wasn’t confined to Lake Coeur d’Alene!
Maybe they measure only the deck, or the keel. Hmm, I looked it up. You measure from stem (not counting a bowsprit, say) to stern for one measurement, or Length At Waterline, which would be shorter.
Modern naval warships are measured for overall length, not waterline. So, a ship like an Iowa class battleship with a long prow (gawd, I hate not being able to remember the term I want to use) from the bullnose to the sternpost is longer with that measurement than from a waterline measurement. Also, supertankers and other bulk liquid carrying ships are deceptive in that they have a large area below the waterline at the bow which gives them extra capacity. A naval warship carries a sonar dome there. Of course, submarines are totally different, and I can’t even begin to guess at some of their configurations.
In case anyone was wondering, the Mish-an-Nock is 107 feet long. 🙂 (according to the Coeur d’Alene Resort website)