October 11, 2013 ~ Fish!

Will he?

So, yesterday I won a fish. A lovely blue betta fish.  I was of a mind to leave him in the office, not bring him home.  But then I thought again, and well, there wasn’t much choice.  I brought him home.  Teagan went to bed a bit early last night – she wasn’t a good listener – so Ashlin got to watch me set up the tank and helped me feed him dinner.

Today, both girls got to help me feed him dinner.  Each got to drop a flake or two in the tank, and then waited for him to eat.  Mr. Fish was a bit slow to start, but eventually he did eat,  Good fish!

Him did! Him ate it!

Ashlin wants to call him puppy. Teagan’s first choice is bunny.  I have weird kids.

June 20, 2013

Garden

I love the garden.  I do try to get out as much as I can.  Not that I get to do all that much, a given, but it’s still fun.  And overgrowing.  Can you see how many black-eyed susans I’ll have soon?  I wish the wisteria would bloom, it hasn’t since we’ve moved in.

Hidden astilbe

The bed under the kitchen window needs a lot of attention too. Though there is this lovely astilbe tucked away.

hydrangea

The hydrangeas are just starting to bloom. They are such a lovely shade of blue.

little suns

I planted this moonbeam coreopsis when we moved in.  There may be enough now to separate and move into a gap.  So cheerful!

Water lily

Look!  The water lily is growing!  It’s not the floating flower, but the reddish leaf just to the bottom left of the flower.  (That flower is a float to help you find the plant if need be, before the flowers show up).  We put that in a week or so ago.  And there’s a bonus blurry fish!

Speaking of growing plants…

seedling!

One of the sunflower seedlings is up already!! Teagan was so excited to see it, too. She had a good time watering the patch, and wanted to know why there weren’t any more. I told her that one was here early :D

March 13, 2013

Crocus

Today I took a quick tour of the garden at lunch time. Little shoots are coming up, tender green. Brown leaves rustle underfoot, begging to be cleared away.  Stu cleared off the fish pond and then I cleaned off some of the stray leaves.  We have at least two fish that survived this cold and long winter.  Unfortunately too many frogs didn’t, I scooped at least four out.

I can’t wait to start cleaning out the flower beds!

 

PS.  I’ve decorated for St. Patrick’s Day!

March 1, 2013

Driving to day care yesterday, the girls each had a stress-ball shaped like a fish.  Stu asked Ashlin not to eat the fish.  Teagan chimed in “you have to cook it first.  And when you  cook it,  it becomes fish sticks.”  Fish becomes fish sticks like magic!  She then followed up “when you cook a chicken it becomes chicken noodle soup.”  Stu replied, “oh, I didn’t know that.”   Teagan immediately jumped in with “SO!!! If you want fish soup, you cook a fish with a chicken.”

Awesome!

She’s the new Julia Child!

August 19, 2012 ~ the weekend in pictures

Oops.  Forgot to hit post :D

Fort!

We were told about Target having a sale on Slip n Slides. Best five dollars ever!

Slippy hill!

What *are* you doing?

We recouped a bit from all the sliding…

Blues Clues Thrall

We got some cheap fish to restock the pond…

New Fish!

We played on the swing set.

Swinging Sisters

Uh. Oh. Climber.

Ashlin decided to give me a heart attack.

Fish Reflections

July 26, 2012

I didn’t get to do my weekly sunflower update last week.  It was a bit crazy.  And sad.

Anyway, I had taken a picture before I left Wednesday, but went out Tuesday or Wednesday to see how big they had gotten.  I was quite surprised, they were HUGE!  Well.  Not huge in the six foot tall sense, but huge in that they seemed to go from 5-6 inches tall to two feet-ish tall.

Tonight, we sat in the drive way a bit, I listened to Teagan tell me that I would get a pink car if a tree fell on mine like the truck [on the way to day care] and if the tree falls on dada’s car he would get a purple one.  When she was done giving everyone in the family a car like Oprah, I suggested we go look at the sunflowers.  She hadn’t seen them in at least two weeks, as some of the excitement had fled, and I had been watering them after she went to bed.  She still is a goldfish.

She dashed from the car, ran to the flowerbed, and laughed when she saw them.  They weren’t the wimpy seedlings she remembered, they were as tall as she was when she knelt by them.  She touched the leaves, looked under them, laughing.  She was fascinated by the shamrocks growing underneath, calling them baby sunflowers.  I gently corrected her.  Listening to her try to say “shamrock” was fun, she rolled the word over in her mouth a few times before she moved back to the sunflower leaves.

Once she was done with the sunflowers, which was after only a few minutes, she started to dash off to the fishpond to look at the fish.  She doesn’t know that they’ve all died.  I’m not sure if we’ll be able to keep that secret much longer, but I’ll try.  Death is still something she doesn’t understand.  She kept asking why my friend’s ears had fallen off when we told her that her “aunt” was sad.  I successfully distracted her with the promise of a cheese sandwich.

If only it was so easy.

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July 12, 2012

Thunder! And Flowers!

We ended up losing the fish today. Sigh.  It’s an empty pond.  With frogs, and one crayfish.  I’ll finish treatment and give the pond place a call.  See what they suggest us doing – emptying the pond and refilling, doing more than two weeks treatment.  Maybe we’ll wait a bit before getting more, but I would like to get more.  I really like the fish.

In other happy news, Teagan came home with a bunch of art.  This is her drawing a thunderstorm, raining on her flower.  I didn’t get to ask if they were her sunflowers or not.  She sent me out to water them tonight while she finished eating dinner.

She did a bit of art for everyone!  Mama, dada.  Even Ashlin and the cat.  Not sure where she got the name “Gagoo,” maybe the teacher misunderstood Teagan’s pronunciation of “Clio”.

She’s asked for watercolors.  I think she may be mature enough to be able to paint a nice picture and not get paint everywhere.  They may just be one of her rewards for being good, and quiet, and not falling in the toilet.

For Dada

For Mama

For Ashlin and the cat

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July 10, 2012

Praying Mantis

Stu noticed this lovely buggie on the door this morning as he was shuttling the kids to the car.  At first, I thought she was stuck in a spider web, but no.  Soon enough, she was waving an arm at me, maybe threatening the phone I was using to take her picture.  Being shy?

We’re lucky Teagan wasn’t really awake enough to take notice of her, or we’d have a new pet, or one that we’d need to convince her didn’t need to live in her bed.

Unfortunately, some of our other pets aren’t faring very well.  Our pond is “sick”.  The Pond Store down the road gave me some medicine to put in to try to kill off the parasites that have already killed two of the new fish, and both of the big ones.  There’s only one fish left right now.  And about ten frogs, who don’t seem to sing.

Hopefully, the one fish will survive.  After a bit, we’ll get some more fish.

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June 16, 2012

2012 – 06 – Fish Shopping, a set on Flickr.

We went fish shopping today. After her afternoon nap – I woke her up (!) so we could get there before they closed – she was excited to go picking out fish.

They had a huge barrel of pollywogs, some with legs, some without. We already have about four froggies that live in the pond, so we just looked. I was strong, and walked past the gorgeous plants. I really would love a lily pad, but we didn’t take the time to ask if it would be good in our pond. There was a lovely pitcher plant in bloom that I hadn’t seen last trip. Also, there were baby turtles in the pond, and Teagan was an eagle eye spotting them. Ashlin, who we carried, pointed at everything.

We hurried to the greenhouse that had the fish, as it was just about closing time. When the guy came back, we pointed to the ones we wanted. He was great at netting the exact fish we wanted. Stu picked an orange one with a bold black stripe. I found one that had a spot on the back of it’s neck that looked like a black star in a red heart . Teagan ended up wanting a white one (not pink!) that had some spots on the base of it’s tail and fins.

We also got a crawfish to nibble on the delectables at the bottom of the pond.

It was a big production getting them all into the pond, but the girls really enjoyed it. Teagan got to feel the crawfish’s feet through the bag, which made her giggle and also made her a bit scared. Both girls got to get a close up look at the fish while they acclimated a bit before going into the pond.

I had a hard time trying to get a picture of all the fish in the pond, what with herding one baby or the other, as well as the sun glare. Maybe tomorrow.

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June 10, 2012

Today we went to a nearby nursery that specializes in water features.  The pump and filter for our fishpond leaks, and didn’t seem to be cleaning the water.  It wasn’t a big leak, but over a week the pond would be down 10-15 gallons, so, enough to be a problem. Walking through the demo ponds filled with koi and goldfish, fountains, waterlilies was so relaxing, even with both girls.

purple lily

Bouncer

Mr. Toad doesn’t want to talk

Stu talked with one of the pond experts, who gave him some tips on how to clean out the pond and how to fix the filter.  It’s probably not broken, but just needs a new part and gasket, so that’s nice.  While I played and tried to distract the girls, Stu borrowed the baby pool to let the fish hang out in while he started emptying out the pond.  Teagan was too interested to stay away for long, she kept going back to see.

Not a bad vacation

He got just about all the water out, then started vacuuming up the sludge and ick that was on the bottom, making the water murky.  There was a lot of sludge, and it smelled horrible.

Empty pond

He even shoveled out a bunch of the sand and gravel so we can strain it and put the white stones back in.  They do look nice on the bottom.  There were a few round river stones keeping the lining down, but there were also some stray flagstone that may have fallen out of the wall.  Those are in a pile to see if we can fit them back in the wall.

You can really see the difference in the water.  I don’t think the pond has been this clean for years.  It definitely wasn’t this clean and clear when we moved in.  Stu did a fantastic job.  We’ll be going back next weekend to get some new fish.  We seem to have lost the three orange ones over the winter.

I want some waterlilies.  Teagan wants a pink fish.