Saturday, July 18

Yesterday I took on the task of cleaning the fish ponds in front of the house. This means mucking out about 2 months worth of decaying leaves and other unrecognizable debris from the bottoms of the ponds. One pleasant surprise was finding five 4" Koi in the lower pond. In April several of our larger Koi somehow slid down the runway to the lower pond and must have laid eggs there. Can't believe we didn't see them until now. I also netted about 8 microscopic hatchlings and put them in a fountain. Guess I will see how big they get before winter. As I was preparing to clean the ponds I found a Monarch butterfly that had just hatched. This threw my time schedule all out of whack as I had to take pictures and finally moved the drying butterfly so I wouldn't disturb him as he dried his wings out. My resident red-tail hawk chick has fully fledged and has been hanging out along the creek in front of the house. I think his parents are attempting to teach him to hunt in the meadow across the creek but I swear he makes so much noise I can't imagine a sane mouse venturing out while he is there. He flew over several times and is quite a beauty! (of course I could never reach my camera in time for a picture) Last night for entertainment, we went to see the London Arts Council's presentation of "Pippin". Several of the chorus members were from West Jeff and we had been especially invited by one of Mr. B's students and basketball players, Abby Arnold. Wendy Webb, one of my former students had the lead and did a fantastic job. She is just as cute as can be and played a lovable, laughable widow who was looking for a man to sit at the head of her table and help with her large estate. Her voice is amazing and I'm convinced she should try out for Idol or America's Got Talent!! Hope everyone has a nice week end. I'm taking it easy this morning trying to rest up from the pond cleaning ordeal that took 4 1/2 hours, not counting taking pictures of the butterfly. I only fell once and luckily my head didn't go under. Yuk!