OUR POND OUR FISH ..... MY POND MY FISH

OUR POND       OUR FISH

       MY POND          MY FISH

                                       

                                  My Life Book.

Now let's see ..................where was I?

Digging the hole for the pond .......with shovels,

                    old Ford Tractor.....

                                  friend's backhoe

fill the pond, add fish and plants ............. that's it in a nutshell.

                                  

Good job, Eldon and Monica!

Did I mention the bluegill?

A friend gave us

four bluegill to mingle with

the goldfish.



 You haven't lived until you've fed a

blue gill after 

 they swim to the surface,

pucker  up their little blue-gilly lips

and take a grasshopper right out of your hand.

I tell you .... it's a RUSH!

And then you have to go on the hunt

for more grasshoppers

and more grasshoppers

and  anything creeping or crawling

flying or wiggling

just to keep the blue gill fat and happy.

Chipmuncks scurry under the waterfall
and take a cooling sip from puddles
at the base of the rocks. ...
A brave lizard, as if to dare me to catch him,
keeps time to unheard music as he
bounces up and down on his four
scaley little feet ....so close I could touch him with my toe.

A family of quail, daddy quail ever on watch,
speedily sip from the pond then scurry off
and away to do quail business.

Seasons come and go

sunrise and sunset

over two years

...............

things are the same but different.

A brilliant garden sunset overlooking the pond

brings one more page in my

Life Book to a close.

But there's tomorrow.

A new day adding to my

memories ....

one chair sits overlooking the pond ..

no more blue gill .....

an eagle picked them off one at a time.

But the goldfish greet me with

hungry open mouths each morning

when I feed them.

They're now

My Fish

    My Pond ...

Whow     A New Life ..............

one day at a time

then another

and another

to feed the fish,

appreciate the sunsets

and flowers, and meet the creatures

who live around my pond

as I start

a new

chapter in my

Life Book.

Thanks God for the beauty all around

my pond!

.............................................

Mmmmm .... I just found this photo

of my mother in Hawaii

Elizabeth "Betty" Kaemerer

1918-2005

NOW THAT'S A POND!

OUR FISH ....... MY FISH

              OUR POND BEGAN
                          AS A HOLE IN THE GROUND
                                     

STEP ONE:

DIG A HOLE IN LOCATION OF YOUR CHOICE.

BEST SPOT RIGHT NEXT TO THE DECK.

MONICA CAN HELP DIG

STEP TWO:

FIRE UP THE

LITTLE RED

TRACTOR

TO FINISH DIGGING THE HOLE

AND GET MORE MUSCLES TO HELP.

That was a lot of

sweat ..... strain

and WAY more than

we could do with shovels,

or our 42 Ford tractor .... Eldon's pride and joy.

The tractor almost got stuck .....

he dug one last shovel full then tried to back out of the

increasingly lengthy hole.

Approaching the mid-point of the

desired 30 feet long pond

the tractor refused to back out with

that one-more- bucket full of dirt.

Eldon got off the tractor

climbed out of the hole

and looked at the ravaged landscape

and said,

"What have I done!"

He climbed back into the hole,

fired up Big Red

and with the expertise of

a BIG RIG TRUCKER

he coaxed that beligerrant

and weary tractor backwards out of the hole.

Then he called a friend with a back hoe to finish the job.

If you don't have the right tools for the job

GET BIGGER TOOLS!

STEP THREE:

Fill the hole in the ground with water,

add a waterfall,

build a bridge,

put in plants and

rocks around the pond

and fish ......

add fish to the crystal clear water.

And a fake duck or two.

ONE FISH ...........TWO FISH.....THREE FISH    
TWO  DOZEN FISH

THE FIRST THREE YEARS! 

And flowers ....

did I say

plant flowers

all around the pond ....?

Irises

mint

snapdragons

and abundant water plants.

Winter wonderland,

and the pond

rests ...

goldfish slumber like bears hibernating

through the long cold freeze of winter.

They turn into

little Golden Popsicles.

Immersed water pump

keeps pumping away,

spilling over the rocks

becoming a

frozen water sculpture.

The steady stream of water pumped from

the deepest part of the pond

tunnels through the ice and snow

 aerating the "golden popsicles' " frigid home.

And all is at rest.

Continued ....

My Fish