Finding myself wide awake at dawn I popped out to check the
pond and sighed. It had lost water overnight. I’d left the hose out so I set it
filling the pond again. I also stuck my hand into the bog filter and found it
very full of rooty stuff. This happened in the old splash pool so I scraped
some out, and there was quite a flood of water coming out. I had a naïve hope
that had fixed the problem and went back to bed where Treacle had moved in to
my spot. She wasn’t going to shift without an argument. I then lay there for a
while pondering the pond.
I got up at half past seven, turned off the hose and made
toast which I scoffed whilst peering into the Internet. It was much the same as
ever. There was a post to the Dog Club’s Facebook page; someone had seen an
adder on the field by the rugby club. Some people get rather paranoid about
snakes. Personally I think they are lovely things but I know
of people who won’t go to certain woods and fields because a snake was once
seen in the general vicinity. They really do seem to think that a two foot long
grass snake is going to attack them.
There were several people posting photos of domestic cats
to the Big Cats Facebook pages claiming that Tiddles from next door was a wild
puma, and a surprising amount of posts from the flat Earth brigade. Some people
really do think the Earth is flat.
I did my blood pressure, munzed and wordled, and got the
dogs onto their leads. As we drove up to the woods the pundits on the radio
were talking about audio books. I say “audio books” – they aren’t books
at all, are they? They are recordings of someone else reading a book which
saves you the effort of actually reading it. Some woman was being interviewed
who was singing the praises of listening to someone reading a book to you.
Apparently it allows you to multi-task; multi-tasking being the process where
you stuff up several things at the same time. If people like listening to
recordings of someone else reading a book, then that’s fine. But don’t call it
“reading a book”; it isn’t. Neither is reading a comic and calling it a
“graphic novel”. (I’ve done this rant before, haven’t I?)
We got to the woods and had a good walk. I avoided the
rancid thing we found yesterday; the dogs just found other putrid things in
which to roll.
I wore my boots today; the birdsong app didn’t detect any
ducks. Perhaps there are ducks in Kings Wood; perhaps it isn’t my squeaking
boots?
We came home for another bath, and I then had another look
at the pond. Was the water level lower again?
I started painting fence panels and got two done. I can
remember many years ago reckoning that the bigger panels took an hour and a
quarter each to paint, and that estimate still holds. I then painted up our
Green Man garden ornament, finished up painting my mum’s old ornament which I
started painting yesterday, and then painted a third fence panel. All the time
looking at the pond.
That water level was definitely going down…
In the first instance I need to work out where the leak is,
so I disconnected the bog filter so that the output from the pressure filter
goes directly back into the main pond.
If the water level goes down then the leak is in the main
pond, and that will be a major job for which I will need help (he smiled
hopefully).
If the water level doesn’t go down then the issue is in the
bog filter and there’s a couple of possibilities. Either the plant roots have
gone mad and need a little pruning.
Or there’s an actual leak.
Both are relatively easy fixes compared to re-lining the
main pond. We shall see what happens.
After five and a bit hours I decided that I’d done enough
garden work. If you stand at the back door it looks just the same as it did
when I started. If you look closer the pond looks a lot worse with water
gushing out of a random hose.
“er indoors TM” finished work,
and we took the dogs to Orlestone as the evening was cooling. We had a good
walk; as we pootled I had my birdsong app running. A dozen different birds on
the first ten minutes walking from the car. And only a blackbird and a robin on
the ten minutes from the half-way point. I’ve noticed before that the birds are
far noisier on the eastern side of Orlestone woods than they are on the
western.
We came home; for a laugh I told the Alexa to play “Spasmo
radio”. Have you ever tried doing that? He’s not bad…
I shall measure my blood pressure in a minute.
And on another non-working day I’ve covered over seventeen
thousand steps. I’m going to work tomorrow for a bit of a rest. I really am.
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