1 May 2024 (Wednesday) - Gardening

I slept rather well. Not having an alarm set helps, as does having settled dogs. I shaved with a new razor blade (what with it being the first of the month) once I’d opened the packet. I wasted an inordinately long time this morning trying to open a packet of razor blades. How hard could it be? – You’d be surprised.
The only thing of note on Facebook this morning was the news that the new version of the geogaching app I use had gone live.
 
I got the dogs organized and we went up to the woods for a walk. So did loads of other people too. Usually once we are away from the car park, seeing more than two other groups is a lot. We met nine today. About three quarters of a mile from the car park we met some normal people with their dog on a lead. They glared at me in a rather pointed way. I wish people would let their dogs run. It doesn’t take *that* much effort to instill a reasonable recall into them.
As we walked we met the children from the local special school. We’ve met them before. Some of the kids stroked Morgan and Bailey, and one went utterly hysterical at the prospect of the dogs running into the camp fire they had made. As if any dog is going to be stupid enough to run into a fire.
 
We came home for a cuppa, then I popped to Bybrook Barn garden centre to get some fish for the new pond. There was a sign saying that they had to ask questions about pond keeping for the animal’s welfare. I felt rather sorry for “junior spotty” who was trying to give me the third degree on fish keeping. He insisted that I started off with five fish, and seemed rather surprised that I only wanted five. He started going on about how many fish you can have in a pond… I suggested about one twentieth of the number they had in theirs, and wondered if things were different for shops rather than for customers. But what do I know – I’ve only been keeping fish (on and off) since 1975.
 
Once home again I popped the bag containing the fish into the new pond. “Junior spotty” had said to leave it for five minutes to equilibrate… I left it half an hour. Long enough to mow the lawn and clean out the big pond’s pressure filter and watch the sparrows on the bird feeder.
The little fish immediately swam under the waterfall and hid. I left them to it whilst I pootled about the garden for a bit before sitting down for a lunch of smoky bacon flavoured crisps and a tin of Doctor Pepper. As I scoffed I kept looking at the water feature at the top of the garden. It has never worked as a water feature in that you couldn’t actually see the water doing much. So I took it all apart, demoted the rabbit water feature to “garden ornament” and had a rummage in the shed. I came up with a water feature head that looked OK, so I had an experiment with it to find the right pump setting to make it work. I maintain it was “an experiment with it to find the right pump setting” and not “spraying water everywhere”.
The upgraded water feature looks far better than it used to.
I then tried the new fish on a little fish food. They all scoffed some; that’s a good sign. And with them fed the dogs went berserk as we did the “Feed the Fish” ritual. I think we’ll keep that to the big pond.
 
By the time “er indoors TM set off to visit Daddy’s Little Angel TM” I was knackered. I didn’t go; I stayed home with the dogs. It can become a bit like hard work with all the dogs mobbing Pogo whilst Pogo mobs anyone he can. As the dogs snored I downloaded the new version of my geocaching app. I was rather dreading doing so as I’ve got used to the old one, but this new one is excellent. It took me five minutes to get it going, and it plays Wherigos too… on ordnance survey maps. A serious result… if you like playing Wherigo.
 
“er indoors TM returned with kebab which we scoffed whilst watching the extended Christmas episode of “Bottom”. I think I’ve eaten too much kebab… 

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