Ready to Add Fish

After drying and cleaning the pond with a mop, sun, and fresh air, I filled it with water and added plants. Patience was actually practiced since this was a 15-day process this time around!After filling the pond with water, I added conditioner/neutralizer and let it sit overnight.Tom reinstalled the pump the next afternoon.The one surviving fish has been living in the barrel for two weeks; hopefully, he'll survive his move back to the big pond.

Our Driveway Finally Got Blacktopped

After a hiatus from home improvement, our driveway finally got repaired - quite by accident! Ever since all the heavy equipment, storage unit, and dumpsters from our remodel/addition work destroyed our driveway (Tom pointed out that 50+ years without repairs had something to do with it too!), fixing it has been one of those "someday" projects. What a nice happenstance that a contractor with an accident-caused cancelled job and a truck full of supplies found his way to our door! The holes aren't filled and there are still some cracks, but it is pretty much waterproof and ready for rain - and it looks MUCH better!

Ben Harper & Damian Marley at the Santa Barbara Bowl

Damian Marley @ SB

Tom and I went to the Ben Harper/Damian Marley concert at the SB Bowl on the 16th and were treated to a fabulous night of music. Damian opened the show at 6:30 and put on a great performance - no wonder Sam is a fan! Wish I'd brought my camera - thanks to the people who posted these videos on You Tube.

Ben & Damian @ SB Bowl

Towards the end of the first hour, Damian and his band joined Ben and the Innocent Criminals in this song. It was cool that Tom and I had gotten to see Bob Marley perform this same piece, in the same place, back in 1979! (It was weird to be the oldest people in the audience, though - no matter where I looked, there didn't seem to be anyone older than us!)

Ben Harper The Greek 8-11

This was shot at the Greek Theater in LA - yes, that's a Dodger shirt this guy from Claremont is wearing! This video was filmed during one of the concerts that took place the weekend before the two Santa Barbara Bowl shows; what a talented and versatile musician! Having only heard his ballads, I had no idea how close to Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn Ben Harper is! (If you go to: http://www.benharper.net and click on the on the road link, you can look up August 16, 2006, and see the set list for the night.)

. . . Pond Maintenance and Nurturing Goes On and On . . .

The sad saga continues . . . the two fish pictured in yesterday's post are dead. With a lot of luck, though, the third - very camera-shy and feisty, maybe-not-even-a-koi-but-a-goldfish - fish might just survive the Pond of Mysterious Koi Deaths. With Tom back in town to corral my impatient, just-do-it NOW tendencies, we drained the pond yet again and this time, will wait a few of days (luckily, I won't have time until the weekend) to totally clean out the pond before refilling it with new plants and fish. (Too bad Scott's Alexander Stone, with all of it's beautiful crystals, hasn't helped keep the last batch of koi alive, but maybe if I can be patient and wait a while . . .)(8/17/06 update: We put the surviving fish in the barrel with the water lilies and we are assuming it is still alive in there.)

Our Backyard Pond: Starting Over AGAIN

After building a much deeper pond so the marauding racoons wouldn't be able to catch our koi very easily, all three of them died of an unknown cause. Yep, two of them were floating, dead in the water, last Thursday night, and this surviving koi lasted an extra day but was also stiff by Friday night! After draining, cleaning, and refilling the pond as best as possible and adding water conditioner with electrolytes, I moved healthy plants from the other pools, bought a new, deep-water plant, and introduced three new fish to our water garden. Of, course, more landscaping and replanting happened - I don't think that ever stops!(Don't forget you can click on these pictures to make them bigger.)New Fish One and New Fish Two