June - winter for us - has just delivered its first strong frost. We don't get ground freeze here, and a frosty morning is usually followed by a brilliant sunny winter's day. That's what it was when I sat out on the deck, sipping my flat white and surveying the pond from under my hatless brim.
The watermeal shows no signs of abating. It's thick and lush. I wonder: should I be concerned? Over the years, I've tended to take a path more or less embodied by the credo:
Nature is easy to follow and hard to lead.The pond level is creeping up and - at a guess - is about 1-2 inches short of being full. That's measured from the bottom of the main struts of the bridge: they are not water immersion treated. I'm still doing a daily top up, pumped from our well, but I do wonder if the watermeal is helping seal around the edges. Edges that we could not get the bentonite clay powder to stay on and seal.
The Muscovy ducks have proved enigmatic. The first two broods had a 100% mortality. The mother ducks simply abandoned them, after a few days. For the third brood, we snagged the ducklings and the mother and caged them together. We did the same for all subsequent broods - the last one was another batch of 18. Four of them went to a new home, yesterday.
Pictorial Parade Brood One Brood Two Brood Three Brood Four (Second attempt by that same duck.)
In another quirk, two nests of at least 15 eggs each were abandoned, before incubation was complete. The stories about Muscovies being good mothers was obviously a nasty rumour!
I've done nothing further about the floating island. Aside from some nice flowering pond pickerel, the idea was to shade the water a little. The watermeal is certainly doing that job.
Another reason for that being a failed / deferred project is certain family changes. In this case a
house bus, along with daughter and dogs. Being the only one with the necessary licence class, daddy got to fly south and drive the beast back here, to the farm. Took three days and two nights to get the 14.3 ton, 40 foot, ex-wide-bodied coach behemoth back here.
Yesterday, daddy was fixing the water pump and measuring up for a new locker panel to mount a new inverter and counter-sinking the holes on the step kick strips, to get the screw heads down lower.
The perennial rye grass seed scattered over the paddock, following the addition and spreading of 90 cubic yards of river silt by daddy-on-the-digger, is now coming through, despite the cold, wet weather.
No wonder the pond got neglected. Next time someone asks me what retirement is like, I'll refer them elsewhere for polite comment. My observations may be unprintable.
Retirement you say?
What's that, exactly?
Tell me a bit more about it.
It certainly does sound like a concept I could get interested in.
Max:We're on the east cost of the North Island. You would be most welcome to visit. Nearest city is Hastings and nearby Napier (30 mins away) has a regional airport.
Don't worry!
It's changed a lot since my father took that picture. The deceptively-innocent looking babe-in-arms is me, 69 years ago! Plus, tail dragging Lockheed Loadstars are quite out-of-fashion, nowadays, too.
And we're quite a long way from the South Island. A 3.5 to 4 hour ferry crossing, (no fun in wild weather, of course), followed by a 4 - 5 hour drive to get here.
