Casper has discovered the fish.
And the fish are surely aware of him. They’re huddled up against the wall of the pot, motionless, where he can’t see them.
I like having both the fish and the snails in there, but I can see it’s definitely going to mean more maintenance on my part. Going to need to scoop gunk off the bottom more often, and remove plant overgrowth. However, everyone likes looking at the fish, cats and people. I’m happy with the tradeoff.
Ride this carousel.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-seaglass-carousel-new-york-new-york
Who knew that there were fish that big in the middle of LA? I’ve seen the guys that fish in these places, but who knew that the ones in LA were strictly catch and release? It seems like such a pastoral past time for the middle of LA, very zen.
Long ago, in my distant and misspent youth, I used to embroider. I was one of those girls that ran around in jeans with flowers, etc. sewn all over them. I used to sit in front of the TV with my family at night and sew all night long. Shirts, jeans, jackets, nothing escaped the needle.
Recently I’ve been feeling nostalgic for it. It’s a very zen activity and gives me something to do with my hands when watching TV with the Spouse. I’ve wanted to do a shirt or jacket for a while, but couldn’t decide on what kind of design. I wanted it to be plants and flowers, but none of the designs I could think of appealed to me at all.
The a light bulb went on. I’ve been taking pictures of my own garden for years. Why not use that? I have hundreds of photographs for reference material. Use the flora and fauna of my own garden. Use the flowers, plants and vines. The birds and butterflies. With the cats and caterpillars, the tortoise and the fish. The more I think about it, the more I like it. Plenty of subject matter. The pieces of the design are filling themselves in in my head. Now I have to find the right garment. Heavy weight denim is a pain to sew through, and fabric that is too light weight puckers. If this actually gets made it’s going to be a once in a lifetime thing. It’ll take months, if not a couple of years. But the picture of it is building up so clearly in my head I want to start it right away.
I was reading today in It’s Not Work, It’s Gardening’s blog about issues with wildlife. It reminded me of the issues we have with our yard.
We have our own squirrel issues. It does not, thus far, bother with the bird feeders. We only put thistle seed out and I don’t know if they’re worth the effort. It has, however, been systematically raiding my macadamia nut tree.
My husband thinks I should just let it be, but I don’t think he knows that it will strip the tree before any of them are ripe.
I also have problems with a fertilizer eater, except it’s not wildlife. Spud, my red-footed tortoise (captive bred) thinks that my organic fertilizer is tortoise candy and will eat any I put around the plants underneath the compost in the fall. He also has a taste for my sneakers.
There are occasional forays by racoons, but they mostly eat the fish out of the pond. I stopped buying expensive koi and started buy feeder goldfish at a twenty five cents each. Much more economical and I don’t end up heartbroken when my favorite butterfly koi disappears.
We have a water pot on our patio. In it are three goldfish of the cheapest kind, one water lily and some other plants.
It seems that three goldfish is the perfect number. We’ve had three for more than a year now. I buy feeder goldfish at the local pet store. Feeder goldfish being the kind of fish people feed to their other pets. I have had more expensive and more showy fish, but racoons got into the yard and ate them, so I decided to spend less money on fish.
I’ve managed to keep the fish alive so far by feeding them, but not too much. I feed them once or twice a week, just a little. One of the side effects of feeding them is that they come to the surface when people are near. And not only people. Ash jumped up onto the rim of the pond to get a drink and got a fish kiss along with her drink of water. I didn’t see this, the Wonderful Spouse described it to me.
Fortunately for both fish and cat, no one was harmed. It was really funny to hear about the fish kissing the cat, though.
Blog of a geek with a garden 