I try to keep an ear to the pond when I’m near it, and with warm weather comes clogged filters. I heard the telltale pitch of the pump motor last night when I was going to bed, so nothing would do but go out there in the tatty red robe we use for hair dye and barefoot and pull the filter in the dark…<\/p>\n
Jane came out to bring me my sandals and offer common sense like “Cut it off until morning,” —which I wouldn’t do: I have this thing about our waterfall. It’s like a talisman of peace and tranquility and I knew I wouldn’t get any sleep if the water-sound was dead. So I snatched out the filter, heavy with about 5 lbs of yuck. Jane’s\u00a0second piece of advice was “Get one of the clean filters from the garage.”<\/p>\n
We’d bought some bulk filter material and cut some new filters, and yes, I’d rather that than wet feet and wet everything, so I went after a clean one. Pulling the old one out of the frame spattered yuck all over my feet and hands, naturally—but I got it changed out and happy again and a little soap cured the rest.<\/p>\n
That morning I’d waked to the smell of skunk, which was so bad, via our open windows, that I’d hunted down the room deodorant, closed the windows, and tried to get the air breathable. Jane slept through it, though she said she’d been up just around 5 am (I detected skunk at about 5:15), so I think she must have startled the skunk.<\/p>\n
I’m sure skunks can’t climb fences the way raccoons can—so I wasn’t worried about the fish; but I was really afraid a fat skunk had bought the farm on the arterial next to our house. It hadn’t, thank goodness: the smell had gone away by breakfast time—I was prepared to do breakfast indoors if it hadn’t.<\/p>\n
So, to our year’s total of 3 marmots and a coyote and countless California quail jogging past our house at the edge of dawn on a city street, add one frazzled skunk, who clearly made it through traffic, but who may have delivered an editorial comment on the way.<\/p>\n
No repeat this morning, so I hope Pepe le Pew is on his way to an assignation somewhere beyond the next subdivision, down the cliffs and into the wildlife area. You have to wonder what comes next.<\/p>\n
Jane meanwhile has been going crazy with the Paintshop Pro program, which keeps slowing down on her; but I rather agree it’s probably the size of the files.<\/p>\n
And we get about another week of this 90 degree weather, which means our fishes can go on putting on weight. Nowadays they hang out under the floating ring of water hyacinth and are so interested in something under there that they don’t always come out to beg for food. I have a feeling they’ve found out about hyacinth roots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I try to keep an ear to the pond when I’m near it, and with warm weather comes clogged filters. I heard the telltale pitch of the pump motor last night when I was going to bed, so nothing would do but go out there in the tatty red robe we use for hair dye […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":751,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6,34],"class_list":["post-716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-pond-build","tag-the-daily-grind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/751"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}