Dragon's Orchid Garden

It started as a hole in the ground with water in it.  We wanted our Butterfly Peacock Bass, Jack, to live there since he was too big for his indoor aquarium.  He didn't make it, but two koi and a pleco have done well except for the time the big white koi decided to try his hand at air breathing and jumped out.  Luckily, Wayne was there to scoop him back into the water.  This was probably a sign that all was not quite right with the living environment.  Apparently, one should have proper filtration, maintain a certain PH, feed koi on a certain schedule depending on water temperature and make sure the pond water does not resemble pea soup. Granted, these are not pedigree koi.  They're Petco koi, the kind of inbred scanky koi that are sneered at and made fun of by their expensive cousins at Pondscapes .  But, they deserve a life and to that end, we've undertaken a project to educate ourselves on how to keep them and the hole in the ground healthy. ...

Yesterday was absolutely gorgeous, sunny, 70 degrees.  Today is cloudy and rainy with thunderstorms and cooler, with a high of 68.  Yesterday Wayne built a pergola over the pond.  The pond and all of the landscaping around it took a beating this winter.  It was unusually cold, with one memorable 10 day stretch of freezing temps at night.  The pond has turned an alarming shade of green.  The pergola is meant to keep the strongest rays of the sun off of the water.  I know we need a stronger filter, and to add some more underwater plants.  That will help.  At least the koi are still swimming and eating.  Not sure about the plecostomus.  He (she?) is pretty big, but we can’t see into the water and he tends to hide anyway.  What a difference from last summer, when we built the pond.  Apparently, we have much to learn.   From Backyard Pond From Backyard Pond The plan is to plant some kind of flowering vine at each o...

It took me more than a week, but it's out of the box, and into the renovated home office. The new iMac was just so beautiful, I couldn't set it up in the dingy little room that once housed my utilitarian Dell (wheezing and stalling and acting generally slow and buggy). I still have a hell of a lot to learn. Everything I have learned so far has delighted me to the point of tears (what's that all about, hormones?) Just a few minutes ago, I clicked on a group of photos in iPhoto and then slideshow. It adds theme music (or any music I choose) and one can even pick from several slideshow formats like "Ken Burns" (which has jazz music and zooms in on faces and pans the pics), or "Shatter" which I liked a lot and would love to be able to add here, but I haven't learned how to do that just yet. The downside of all this is I haven't been knitting at all this week. On the upside, I learned that I can set up my own wireless network, and that now I ca...

There it is.  It's in it's perfect box.  It arrived today all the way from Shanghai in just 8 days.  So quickly, that I don't even have my wireless network set up yet.  I will RTFM, then call my buddy, Sam, who is a pc specialist (but not a mac specialist) and we will get this big bad beautiful piece of ultra-modern technology working.  I feel like I have to paint my office and scrub the floors, and get new window treatments.  I am not worthy.  Wait...yes I am.  And I have next week off to polish my imac's new home.  As if this were not enough to make me giddy with happiness, I just heard from Jenny at Miss Jenny's Soaps that I won the February drawing and she's sending me 3 bars of her fabulous organic artisan soap for free!  I chose lemongrass and cinnamon and asked her to pick another for me since I already have lots of patchouli, my favorite.  I think I should buy lottery tickets.  I think I'll paint the office green, a ni...

I've come to the conclusion that I have so many WIPs (works in progress) because I simply cannot finish one thing before starting something else. I have an idea, and I have to run with it, even though I haven't finished the last (2, 3, or 4) ideas. My day off today was no exception. The thing is, I do finish eventually. And today I finished several WIPs. So it was a good day. Kim and Krue visited for lunch. Krue and I both had runny sneezy noses, so I cut us up some apples. I'm quite a neat apple eater, but Krue prefers to crush his apple pieces into little microbial bits before eating about 10 percent of them, then smearing the rest on his face, clothes and anything else within reach. After they left, Wayne took Sasha to the vet for her annual shots. While they were gone, I made muffins. I wrote previously about this wonderful James Beard recipe for banana nut bread , but I've tweaked it by adding strawberries, which are plentiful here this time of year and delicious...

Wayne and I spent my Wednesday off this week going to the Florida State Fair . He loves that he can get in for only $6 as a senior now. I did, too, as I asked for 2 senior tickets. I lied. I’m not 55. I think I’m pissed that the ticket guy didn’t ask for my ID. We love to just walk around and look. We don’t ride the rides, and anyway, it was too cold for that, though there were some crazy people in paddleboats and kayaks in the little lake. My favorite part is Cracker Country . It consists of a circle of historic buildings from the 19th and early 20th century such as an old railroad station, school, general store and post office (which is an actual working post office). Like a small Old Sturbridge Village , folks that work there dress in period clothing and tell you about what they’re doing. They are blacksmiths, teachers, farmers, they make soap and candles and print newsletters and demonstrate cracking a homemade whip (hence the term Cracker). You can go there all year round, not j...

Last summer, I bought some yarn. Some really beautiful yarn. Not very much of it...just two balls. It was expensive at $13.00 for 60 meters. This always happens when I go to my LYS, Fiber Art, Inc . There's a forcefield that draws me first into the Noro room, then into the sock yarn room, then I begin wandering all of the other little rooms becoming more and more indecisive because there are just so many "shiny things", and I end up with an armload of yarns with no definate plans for their use. But they look really nice stacked into my antique cedar armoire and I WILL use them. They're insurance. The yarns and the patterns I've collected (my 3 inch binder is almost full, plus 2 dozen knitting books and this just since I restarted knitting in May 2009 with my sister's shawl as the first project) are and affirmation of life. I intend to use all of them someday, and I'll have to live forever in order to do so. The yarn I selected that day last summer was No...