After striking out at two hardware stores close to us, we made a flying visit to Concord yesterday to go to Home Depot, where a nice guy scratched his head for a while and finally stuck together three pieces to make the adapter we needed for the pump.
While we were there, I picked up a 2 inch wide spade designed for trenching irrigation pipe, and 100 ft of dripper-line. If it ever stops raining I want to replace the sprinklers in the beds with dripper-line hose.
So today, I braved the fog of bugs to install the new pump from AZ Ponds down in PA. It’s a 4000 gph jobber because the the 3000 gph one I wanted was out of stock. There’s definitely a lot more water in the stream with the bigger pump.
It also seems to be sucking more stuff into the sump. We need a trash-rack to save the water hyacinth. I’ve no clue what to do about the duckweed. One more thing on the infinite to-do list is to pull out the cord of the old pump and bury the cord of the new one. Until the black-flies break go away, though, nothing optional is going to happen out there.
When I ordered the pump I also ordered a quart of “Microbe-Lift”, figuring (correctly) that by the time I got things running again the water would be pretty green. Hopefully this will get the bio-filter going again, and maybe even eat some of the scum on the bottom. One whiff confirms it’s the real thing. It even says on the label “If it doesn’t smell like Microbe-Lift, It doesn’t work like Microbe-Lift.” The recommended dose is a pint to start, then six ounces/week for a month. I’ve got basically three weeks worth left. That should be enough to see if it looks worth continuing with.
While I was installing the pump, I found one dead fish. I never saw more than 7 live ones, but the water was too cloudy to be sure of whether the other four were just hiding, or if they were already heron food. Lisa chased away a wading bird of some sort last evening, so we know that they know the pond is there.
While I was out there, I noticed that the first columbine is blooming, as are the forget-me-nots and the primrose. All of these are English plants, very happy in the daily rains we’ve been having for weeks.
It looks like the orange lilies we planted back in 2001 are having babies. Some appear to be seedlings, others from bulblets. Either way, they’re very welcome. The orange lilies are gorgeous.
Our Queen of the Night tulips are all in bloom, and looking gorgeous. We are not quite sure how some of those bulbs got so close to the gravel driveway, but we should remember to move them when it is safe to do so.
I took a shot of the clearing that will be the new veggie garden. It looks interesting from this side, and we need to keep this vista in mind when we are laying it out.
And finally, I took a few gratuitous shots of apple blossoms, several also with storm clouds and the dying pine tree. Hokusai has nothing on me that being a genius couldn’t match. I’m going to miss that tree, but it is clearly not recovering from having it’s neighbor blown to bits by lightning 15 years ago.