Blogtober Day 19

As you know from a previous post, I have a problem with the pump in my fish pond. I’ve been checking on the fish every day since the pump stopped working, and they had been fine until yesterday. I feed them twice a day, once in the morning and then again in the early evening, when I went out last evening to feed the fish I noticed one of them lying on its side gasping for air, the oxygen in the water was running out and the fish were suffocating. I did not know what to do, as by this time all the stores were closed. In desperation, I emptied almost all the water out of the pond and replaced it with fresh water. My thought was that freshwater should have oxygen in it, so I filled the pond back up, crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. This morning when I checked on them, they were all okay and swimming around happily. As soon as I had finished breakfast, I walked to the nearest hardware store and bought a small pump to put in the pond to keep the water moving and aid in oxygenating the water.

Photo courtesy of ISO Republic

Once the pump was installed and doing its job, I could relax knowing that the fish would be all right and I got on with doing a few things around the house. I cleaned the microwave; took the kitchen bins outside and cleaned them out; repotted a few of my houseplants; pulled out my celery plants that had unfortunately developed a fungal disease and gave the outdoor area a tidy up. 

As I will be at work tomorrow and Thursday I probably won't be posting as I won't have a lot to write about. I will be back with a post on Friday. 

Until then, stay safe and be kind to each other.

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Blogtober Day 16

My self seeded apricot tree in flower.

Another cold day today. I feel like spring is never going to arrive this year. I had quite an easy day today. I finished cleaning the bathroom, the laundry, watered some houseplants and vacuumed the floors. I had another go at fixing the pump in the hope that the missing grommet wasn't the problem but to no avail. I placed an order for the impeller which will hopefully arrive sometime next week.

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Blogtober Day 13, 14 and 15

 I didn't post on Wednesday because I had nothing to write about, I went to work, I came home, that was it. 

Thursday was much the same except that for the first time in years I went late night shopping with my youngest daughter. I wanted to buy some fabric to make myself some face masks to add to the ones I already have. The solid coloured fabrics were all from the remnants bin and the patterned fabrics were all on sale.

Each mask will have three layers a solid coloured layer, a patterned layer and a layer of muslin in between.

I also bought three new jigsaw puzzles at a price that was too good to pass up.

 

The sky on Thursday evening.

We had 26.4mm (1.03in) of rain overnight which I was glad of as it saved me from having to water the  gardens in my front yard.

That brings us to today. I had quite a long list of things to do today and I got most of them done. One of the things on my list was to give the fish pond pump a thorough clean. I took it all apart and cleaned it, put back together, put it back in the pond, turned it on and, nothing. So I took it apart again and made sure the impeller was seated properly, turned it back on and it still wouldn't work. I got the manual out to make sure I had done everything the right way and as I was looking at the diagram I noticed that on the bottom of the impeller was a small black grommet which I no longer had. Apparently it helps hold the impeller spindle in place and without it the pump won't work, so now I have to order a new one as they are a special order and not available in store. I just hope that fixes the problem.

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