Phinneas, Jr., one of my BFFs

Phinneas Junior is following in the webbed footsteps of his Dad  —  hanging out pondside on the back ledge.  He has become quite tame and has started talking (albeit quite softly) when I come out to feed the fish and start talking to them.

Love my BFFs (Best Frog Friends) and the macro lens that hubby gave me for my birthday in 2009 — which is responsible for many of the great photos you see here.   No zooming or cropping of this photo — this is just the way this great camera and lens takes the photo.  Of course if Junior weren’t as tame as his Dad, I probably wouldn’t be able to get quite so close.  But he doesn’t seem to mind having a camera shoved in his face at all.

Just call me the “pond paparazzi”.

Phinneas Junior

Spring Flowers, Fish, and Kitchen

So — work progresses here on the final stages of the big kitchen remodel of 2010/2011.  The tile back splash was put up today and will be grouted tomorrow.  The painter was back doing the outside work on the new bay windows and the new detached garage front that hubby installed a week ago.  And some spring flowers are blooming — irises in the pond, wild daisies next to it.  It was a beautiful, absolutely beautiful day here today.  One could not help rejoicing in the beauty of a perfect spring day.

The day in photos:

tile back splash
the view from my kitchen window -- painter's legs
wild daisy
Lady
Hoover

Father and Son

Phinneas — who has been here from day 1 of the pond and his first generation son were on a rock on the back side of the pond the other day.  Phinneas is as chatty as always — when I come out to feed the fish in late afternoon and start talking to them, Phinneas starts chatting back at me.

Yes, I admit it, I talk to frogs.   And they talk back.   And it’s one of the happiest times of my day!

Phinneas and son

Phinneas is Back!!!

The first frog to appear at our pond in 2005 is back.  Yes, Phinneas survived the winter, dug in somewhere in or near the pond.  Hard to believe that anything could survive buried under all that snow.  But he’s back.  Took photos tonight.  Will post them tomorrow.

Fore!

Yes, it’s golf time.  I played 3 days in a row last week and by Thursday, my feet hurt.  But my game is coming around even though my handicap is going up.   I was part of a foursome that played at the ABC of Ridgefield (A Better Chance of Ridgefield) tournament on Wednesday.  My group placed first in the women’s division and won some money!  And I placed first in the closest to the pin contest on hole # 17 at RGC.  My tee shot was 26 feet away — not really too close, but apparently close enough!

Thursday was such a nice day weather-wise and the Ridgefield Gofl Course was beautiful.  I felt like I was on vacation the entire time we were out there.

Good thing I played a lot last week.  Looks like we have at least 5 days of rain here in a row.  So, not much golfing will occur.

Good news is that perhaps I’ll get some spring cleaning done!

Time for some fish and frog photos from the pond.  I call this one FISH FRENZY.  It’s fishie mating time again and they are all chasing one of the females around the pond apparently right up to the edge.  Some times I’m afraid they’re going to push Lady right out of the water and I’ll come home and find her on one of the rocks!

Fish Frenzy - May 2011

Happy Easter

Suddenly it’s spring!  At last!!!!!

Hubby fired up the pump on our pond yesterday and is running it again today.  The fish are loving their swimming time below the falling water.  This seems to have awakened our entire back yard and the warm (yes it’s ABOVE 70 degrees today) has caused spring to finally arrive.

  • The PJM azalea is ready to boom
  • The weeping cherry absolutely popped open this morning and is in full bloom
  • Our first frog appeared on a rock near the waterfall
  • The male wren is singing and carrying nest-building materials into the birdhouse
  • The new kitchen windows are open

All signs of spring — let the celebration begin!

Happy Easter !

Fish, wool slippers and hardwood floors

I am a musician so I often find myself humming or singing as I work around the house or drive thru town.  Often it is the song that I have just played with the choir or the one I am rehearsing for an upcoming church service.  But things that are going on in my day also often call to mind a song from the past which I find myself singing and occasionally writing parodies of on the fly.

Today’s song was inspired by the very exciting event of the past weekend — the first sighting of swimming fish in the pond as the snow has finally started shrinking here in our part of Connecticut.  Last Sunday, hubby saw the first swimming orange fish in the shallow end of the pond where the ice has finally receded.  There is a rubbermaid box with a light bulb in it that floats upside down (with the aid of some pool noodles) in the shallow end of the pond.  Its purpose is to keep an area of the ice open for oxygen transfer.   The bulb comes on after dark so it illuminates the water immediately under it.  Since for a large part of the winter the pond itself wasn’t even visible, let alone the floating box and the water under it, I have been really worried about my BFFs (Best Fish Friends).  But since Sunday night, fish have been visible slowly moving in the water below the box.  YEAH!   They made it through the winter!!!!!   You don’t know how absolutely happy this has made me.

So, today’s song is from the Beatles:

Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter.
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here.
Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces.
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been here.
Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting.
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been clear

Well, particularly that last verse has had me singing today.

Little fishies, it’s been a long cold lonely winter.
Little fishies, it feels like years since you’ve been here.
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, and I say it’s all right.
Little fishies, the smiles returning to our faces.
Little fishies, it seems like years since it’s been here.
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, and I say it’s all right.
Little fishies, I see the ice is slowly melting.
Little fishies, it seems like years since it’s been clear.
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, and I say it’s all right.
It’s all right.

It’s more than all right, it’s wonderful.

I just finished a quilt for my guild’s challenge.  Several months ago, we each reached into a paper bag (without looking) and drew out three paint chips.  The challenge was to make a quilt using ONLY those three colors and a background color (either black or white).  We also could add one extra fabric but it had to contain ONLY those colors from our paint chips and could not introduce any additional ones.

I ended up making my quilt out of essentially solids since my randomly-drawn paint chips were an odd combination.  There was no possibility of finding an additional fabric to use because no fabric designer in their right mind would have combined the colors that I drew into one fabric.

The quilt was required to contain at least one flower and the creation had to be named.  Given the long, cold, lonely winter we’ve been having here, my quilt was named:

Out of the darkness, Light!  (or – Out of the darkness, tulips!)

And, here is a photo of the quilt, in progress, in my quilt studio with those blasted paint chips:

So, the long winter is almost over and I’m trusting the tulips, crocuses, and daffodils are down there in the darkness waiting to pop up as soon as all the snow melts, just like the fish.  Makes me wonder a bit about the fish and what they do during the winter in the very bottom of the pond.  I’m sure it was real dark down there, covered as it was by 75 inches of snow at one time.  No wonder they are up near the surface now seeking the light.

Oh yeah, and for the last two words of the post title — wool slippers and hardwood floors.

The construction project continues, but slowly.  Today the floor guy was back to fix 6 places on the floor, 3 with too much finish and 3 with too little.  The curing and waiting process begins — a bare minimum of 2 weeks before we put rugs and furniture back in and longer would be better if we can actually wait longer.  We’ve been waiting so long, what’s a couple more weeks?  Hopefully I’ll soon be taking pictures in the new kitchen that have bare feet in them rather than thick felted-wool slippers.

The color in this photo is way off.  Don’t know why and don’t have time to fix it.  Suffice it to say the slippers are a darker blue and the floor a more golden-red color.  Perhaps the camera was having an adverse reaction to taking a photo of the orange and red tulips in that quilt!


First water lily of 2010

Guess this might be just a blog of “firsts in 2010” for now.

The white lily wins the race of first to bloom, but it is in the shallowest water and thus gets warmer when the weather is warm.

First white water lily bloom of 2010
First white water lily bloom of 2010

First fish feeding of Spring 2010

They’ve been at the bottom of the pond for months and only just recently, with warmer weather, out of the cave and feeding on algae near the top and sides of the pond.  My BFFs (Best Fish Friends) have survived the winter and are looking fine.  They do have a lot of algae to eat, but hubby thought it would be fun to see if they remembered what the feeding rock (the place I come to when I feed them) was for.  So, I got some of the lo-temp fish food and went out to the pond and, sure enough, they remembered.  There were lots of sucking noises as they came up and tried to be enthused about this very boring fish food.  My hands and fingers also got lots of “fish kisses”.

First feeding of 2010
First feeding of 2010

And another year by the pond begins today, with the first fish feeding of 2010 on the first day of Spring!

Fish Frenzy!

Fish frenzy in the cold water
Fish frenzy in the cold water

So, it’s hot here today — second day with temps over 90 degrees — and the pond temperature in the deep part had climbed to 84 degrees.  I turned on the hose to add fresh, cold water to the pond and you would have thought I was feeding them the best, tasty food they’d ever had.  They gathered and took turns (none too politely) swimming thru the stream of water, lifting their heads to the very top of the surface as the water poured on.  The ripples in the photo are only a small part caused by the stream of water (it wasn’t that strong) but mostly caused by the furious fish swimming in a frenzy to get some cold water on them.  Time to go out and check on them and give them some more, I think.

I played golf today and if someone had come out on the 15th hole and offered to pour cold water on my head too, I think I would have taken them up on it.