Old fish tank

I know this is an amazingly bad photo, but I included it because you can kind of see how badly crowded my old fish tank was. It is about 13 gallons, and according to some websites (I think they're excessive) you should only have 1 fish per 5 gallons, which means I had 14.666 too many fish in the tank. Actually I think that number is a bit ridiculous for carp, so I'm figuring 1 gallon per fish will work. Less than that worked last winter, I had about 15 in this tank all winter and they did fine although they were smaller back then and they hadn't reproduced. Anyway, I bought a new fish tank on Craig's list yesterday, only 4 blocks away. It was advertised as a 20 gallon tank but I think it is bigger ... I haven't done the calculation for the real volume but I will. I washed the tank out and ran it over night to stablize it, and today I put 10 of the biggest fish in. I am planning to run two tanks all winter because I don't think either are big enough for the fish now. I'll post a picture of the new tank soon, not that it's so excitingly different from any other fish tank.

Fish in a pot

No, I'm not planning to have them for dinner, this was just the cleanest recepticle I could find when I was taking the fish out of the pond. I am still fishing out fish, I got two more today but there is still at least one in there who is evading me. I took out the pump too and filled the pond back up all of the way to the top before taking in the garden hose, I even took in the iron frog, so now the pond is officially shut down for the winter although I am sure it will continue to get visitors when it is not totally frozen over. The second floor bedroom which overlooks the pond is being painted, and my painter said he say a fox in the back yard drinking at the pond and trying to catch the fish. Actually I think it was probably a coyote, not a fox. We did have a fox here a couple of years ago, for two seasons, raising pups in the vacant wooded lot next door, but I haven't seen her this year and I have seen quite a few coyotes, I even almost hit one coming home one night. I haven't gotten any photos of one yet, but I will try, the painter is on the look-out too.

Half frozen frog

While I was fishing the fish out I disturbed Frogger at the bottom of the lower pool. He was in looking flattened an mushy but he did eventually swim away. He is right there in the middle of the photo, and those are my fingers reflected in the bottom of the frame. It appears that the whole body gets mushy when he is in the process of freezing. I would like to document a controlled experiment on how the frog freezes but I am not willing to sacrifice one of my precious frogs in the interst of science. Not that it would necessarily mean sacrificing a frog, but in my experience field test usually go horribly wrong (and even worse, the data get corrupted and is unusable.) Maybe that is just evidence that experimental science is not really my calling, but it sure pays better than being an unknown artist.

Happy Turkey Day!

I was hoping to get a shot of a turkey this morning but the turkey family is not showing itself so I had to use a "stock" photo I took in October. I wonder if the turkeys go south for the winter. I was out this morning fishing out the fish, I got most of them, even the two little grey ones by pure luck since they are very hard to see. I think there is still one orange fish in there, in fact I'm sure there is at least one because I saw it, but it is a wiley one and doesn't want to be caught. I set up the fish tank in the living room and now the 16 fish that I did catch are in a pot of pond water in my kitchen slowly coming up to room temperature while I get the fish tank going. I will probably wait a couple more hours before I put them in the tank, I don't want to shock them with the temperature change too quickly. I'll go out later and try to catch the remaining fish, the big dummy, hopefully he will get lonely and come out of the muck to look for his friends or else it's going to be a long hard winter for the little fishy. I just realised the dark fish is missing too ... I gotta get him out! Even though I maligned him as having evil tendancies in the past and, I recall threatened to leave him out ... Hummm.

Cold fish

I took this picture this morning. The ice is totally gone but the fish are not very lively, they are mostly hiding out at the bottom of the pool under the leaves an muck. This could be a problem when I go to fish them out, unless they get livelier again. I should also remember to check the weather so I can schedule the big fish move on a sunny not-to-cold day because it is so much fun to play in the water on cold rainy days. I wish I had a total head count going in so that I knew when I had gotten them all out but I am not sure how many there were since they never stayed still long enough for me to count them. I may just do it tomorrow before I go to my sister's for dinner, if the weather is pleasant. I also have high hopes of seeing the turkey family again for their thanksgiving day portrait.

Crazy happy

This photo kind of violates my no-pictures-of-people policy, but I am posting it as art. I love the way it turned out, this is the big sister of the babies from Sunday's post and my bff under 10. I was telling her to hold still so I could get a good picture but she was having too much fun and obviously her instincts were good. Today it rained like crazy and was warm, and all the ice melted. I got home after dark and checked on the fish, they are all still in there looking alive but annoyed, I don't blame them, they probably have some serious complaints about the management around here. Hopefully none of my loyal fans will call the MSPCA on me for fish abuse. I promise I'll take them out this week end - Gotta buy that fish tank!

Ice sculpture

This picture is from this morning. I thought that all of the ice would melt today, because it was above freezing, but when I came home at night there was still a layer on the pond. The pump seems to be pumping less water, so I threw in a few more bucket fulls to bring up the level in case it had gotten too low. Tomorrow it really should all melt, since I believe that it is going to get into the forties, in fact the web site I just looked at claims it will get up to fifty degrees which should definitely get rid of all of the ice. It was also a lot less windy today. The ice on the pond is really pretty, it reminds me of when a friend in grad school had an apartment overlooking the Charles river. The ice on the river was amazing, it was a great view, something that my friend would never have been able to afford if it wasn't student housing. We watched the ice and the birds flying with the wind from above and they all fitted together.

Babies!

These are my two newest best friends, they joined us in this vale of tears on Monday. Funny story, I always thought the phrase was "veil of tears" as in screen or illusion, it only occured to me today that the actual phrase is "vale" as in dale or valley. I like my version better, but if you are going to throw quotations around I guess you are obligied to try to be acurate. Anyway, these two little beings joined us on Monday and they are currently in that really boring baby state where all they do is eat and cry and sleep, soon to be followed by that really cute baby state followed by the state where you have to watch them every freaking minute to make sure they aren't killing themselves, followed by the state where you have to forget about retirement and spend every last penny sending them through college. At the moment they are almost unbelivebly small, but they are already trying to assert their little personalities I can tell. The one with the insignia on his hat is the boy, he has a cute Arabic name which is impossible to pronounce for the non-Arabic speaker. I wonder what it will morph into when he hits pre-school. And mom says the girl twin loves it when you talk to her. What a chick! And to both of them, welcome to this phase of the cycle!

Current set up

This is the current pond set up. The water is still running even though it hasn't gotten above freezing all day today. The wind is wickedly strong and the cat has been complaining all day about not being able to go outside, I am resisting the urge to let her out and teach her a lesson. Bad enough that I am subjecting my fish to freezing conditions, however. They are still there under the water, they have been moving around. The little pond heater is still in there, completely frozen in and I have no idea if it is doing any good or even working. I looked for a better pond heater today but I have a feeling that this area isn't sufficiently rural for stores to stock those (I believe they are mostly used to keep water from freezing for livestock.) It will be warming up tomorrow and through next week so I probably won't need one, I plan to take the fish inside on Thanksgiving morning unless the weather improves enough to wait until the weekend. I really need to start shopping for a bigger tank.

Fishes sous glace

The fish under the layer of ice. I'm gambling that they make it through the next two nights, and then it is going to warm up again. They are moving around under the ice, at least they were this morning. Tonight I came home late at night and put more water into the pond with buckets of water to make sure the level was maxed out, but of course I couldn't see anything except that the pump was still running. Yesterday night I moved the end of the hose and the iron frog that weighs it down so that the water is only circulating in the lower pond, that probably helps. Now my fingers are so frozen that I can barely type and I feel kind of guilty about that. This is a picure taken through the ice, those orange stripes are the goldfish.

Iced over

This isn't a very good ice photo but an interesting photo. I came home early today and thought that it would get warm over the weekend so I filled up the pond with water and figured that I would fish the fish out (ha ha) on the weekend. Problem is, it won't be warm on the weekend, I'm thinking of getting a pond warmer. I broke up all of the ice when I got home and it was only about 1/2 inch thick, and the wonderful little pump is still going strong, which keeps the water flowing and the fish from freezing, however if it REALLY dips down there could be trouble. I'm not sure what I should do at this point. I dug up a little water heater, the kind you use for a tropical fish tank, that will hopefully be enough to keep the pump running and the whole system functioning although it is not really the "eco-friendly" solution. As of now, the fish are still alive but not moving around too much. In other news, my friend gave me a copy of photo shop, so now my attempts at photo-modification-art should get a bit better.

REALLY final sighting!

This is from last weekend. It's a bit of a frog spotting test, personally I am a super prow I can spot them in a second from across the garden at this point. But I shouldn't brag, even if I AM fabulous. Last Saturday, as I mentioned earlier, was freakishly warm as any of you who live in this part of the country will remember. I didn't see the frog on Saturday, but Sunday was still warm and Out was out (or maybe it's In) and about. I really think this is it because the temperature dropped like a rock yesterday and now the pond is covered with ice. As I mentioned before, I was out of town on business and I didn't get back 'til late and so I took a rubber mallet and smashed the ice. The pump is still running, the ice isn't very thick, so hopefully the fish are fine, I think they are basically fine unless they freeze solid. I will probably make myself late for work tomorrow fishing them out of the pond, although on the other hand if they make it through the night they'll probably make it through another day.

Devil duck

Devil duck has come to town and he's dangerous, so dangerous. Here he is trying to attack Out from behind, he has no shame. I should probably get the alligator out to take care of him. And change the locks on the door.

Frogger's trip

Here is my latest attempt at turning my photos into art via Picnik, however the possibilities are kind of limited with that tool, just your basic filters and no layers or anything like that. Pretty much everything I make with it looks like bad psychedelic art, hence the name of this post. Also because I have a business related road trip to Rome NY, big whoop. I really would like Photoshop, but I can't think of any good reason why my work would buy it for me and it's kind of expensive. I should poke around more online, there is probably something decent out their that doesn't cost quite as much as photo shop, I'd definitely be willing to pony up $40 or even a bit more. I figure it's going to be a long winter and my many readers may get sick of looking at pictures of the big pile of snow that will be hiding the pool. Then again, interesting things are always happening, maybe it won't be boring at all! My friend came home the other day to a beautiful racoon sitting in her kitchen eating her cat food, she had to work at it a bit to scary it out of the house and then spend the next morning modifying the cat door. Unfortunately she didn't get a picture.

Cool lizard

My best friend in New Hampshire sent this to me today with the following note: "We found a yellow spotted salamander strolling down the hallway on it's way to the swim meet his morning. It was about 7" long. Of course yellow spotted salamanders are not allowed to race because they are too cute, so we put him outside." Pretty amazing. I guess this is what the red newts morph into before the become fully mature. Which is when they go to the base of the dam near my cabin in NH and have the big salamander orgy in the early spring. I will do my best to supply pictures although I'll have to really work on my wild life photography skills. On the other hand, salamander orgy's are very calm and there's not a lot of moving around so it's not like photographing dolphins or something like that.

Another warm day

It was freakishly warm but wet today. The fish were feeling fiesty, moving around quite a bit. I didn't see any frogs, but I did here one plopping into the pond. I had to do some work today from home, and I am found it quite difficult to concentrate due to the lure of the warm weather. Or maybe it's really just due to the fact that I am putting together power point charts on a project I find particularily boring. Not the best way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Oh-oh, I feel another hamster dance coming on ...

Final sighting?

I took this photo last weekend and I was pretty sure it would be the last frog sighting of the year, but now I'm not so sure. After 7 PM on Friday night and it is 56 degrees out! Rainy, yes, but I don't think that the frogs mind the rain. It probably brings out the extra bugs, in fact. Speaking of which, I have been finding a lot of sodden dead worms on the blue stone pavers outside my back door in the last few days. As devotees of my blog will know, I no longer try to rescue them since I have learned that they are a harmful invasive species, however I'm puzzled by the number of dead ones. Maybe something about the combination of cold weather and wet ground? That theory doesn't really fit the data, but I haven't got a better one at the moment.

Ice on the pond

Today as I was leaving for work at 6:30 in the morning I noticed that there was ice on the pond. Just a small amount, but definitely ice. It was all gone by the time I got back from work, needless to say, and I doubt I will be seeing it tomorrow morning. I knew that it was a very cold night because the cat abandoned her spot next to me on the bed for the radiators, which I can't really blame her for because it's like sleeping on a heating pad and it doesn't move around in the middle of the night. Not very soft, but she doesn't seem to mind that. There was also an amazing purple sunrise this morning, one of the benefits of getting up too early in the morning. I can't decide whether to bring the fish in this weekend or push it to one more week. Probably just depends on how lazy I'm feeling.

Alligartors in the house!

I felt sorry for the alligator who hitchhiked home in my luggage from Miami, so I let him come inside for the winter. And now here he is, stealing my snacks! The little sneak. I tried to fish the dead mouse out of my light fixture today, but it seems it already disappeared. Maybe it just dried up and crumbled away? It's hard to feel sorry for a mouse in the house, but still, it's not a great way to go. I hope the alligator makes a good winter housemate, I wonder what his name is, any suggestions?

Feeding fish

Here is a picture of the fish feeding. This is right before I spilled most of the fish food into the pond, oops! On the left hand side is the dark fish, you can see that his nose is very orange now, so is the side of his body, but I still haven't managed to get a good picture of him. Remember how I used to have a calico fish? I had forgotten myself, but now I remember and it must have turned totally orange because it isn't distinguishable from the other fish now and I don't think anyone ate it. It is rather cold and windy today, the water is cold, but the fish are still pretty active, I guess their doing good. I don't remember when I brought them inside last year, but I think it was some time in November.

Time to rake the leaves

Another view from my second floor window. That's the pond in the foreground and all of those brown things lying around are the oak leaves from the beautiful tall oak trees in my back yard. Usually I wait as long as possible before raking because I live on a hill and if the leaves dry up enough then the wind will just blown them away. Also because my standards of lawn care are so low at this point that it hardly seems worth the effort. Today I took a burnt out light out of the recessed socket in my bathroom and it came out with part of a dead mouse stuck to it. I guess the mouse fried itself or burnt itself to death, not pretty. The rest of the mouse is still in the ceiling, I should fish it out but I'm really not looking forward to that, maybe it will just dry up and crumble to nothing but mousey bones. I guess mice coming inside is another aspect of fall, one that the cat is really enjoying, but not me so much.

He's back!

Yeah, my 100th post! Good reason to get back to basics with a photo of Frogger. I disturbed him when I was digging around the pond to find the leaks. He must have been hiding in the mud, I hadn't seen him for a long time. He's gotten HUGE! It's not just me who thinks that, either, my friend stopped by and was amazed at how big he's gotten. Unfortunately the photo really doesn't show scale well, I need to pose him next to a penny or a pencil or something but I don't think he would stick around for that. Or maybe it is another frog altogether. This spring I got a toad with the shipments of flowers for the charity flower sale I organized and I let it loose in the garden but I haven't seen it since, too bad. Shortly after I took this photo Frogger (if that's his real identity) jumped into the pond and dug himself into the muck at the bottom. I wonder if he has been coming out during the warm days while I am at work.

Priceless fur coat

It glows, it moves, it gets trailed in the pond and still comes out looking great! Compared to the fur coats at Sax, Squeakers is way ahead. She probably has the best fur coat in the world ... Well if we don't mention her cousins the white tigers etc. I don't think Squeakers would know what to do with a white tiger. Probably hide, I hope. Here she was on one of the last perfect fall weekends, hanging by the pond with me, taking it all in. And yes, I'm going somewhere with this, it's not just another excuse to put a picture of my cat on the blog. Actually domestic cat fur is very low quality and, for some reason, does not make good coats. At least that's what my mother told me and she was a fountain of bizarre trivia and almost always correct. Also I believe her because if not I presume there would be a very active industry of cat farming, not good for the cats. Unfortunately that doesn't help the minks, don't get me started ... again.

95K fur coat

Funny story, I ended up at a fur coat sale at Sax in Boston. Luckily there was free food and cocktails, I was shilling for a charity, hopefully I did some good. As you might imagine, normally I wouldn't be caught dead in a fur shop since it's quite the opposite of my political and moral inclinations. The coat in the picture cost 95 thousand dollars, although I was told that a) the prices are negotiable, and b) this wasn't the most expensive fur there. Pretty amazing that there were still people out looking at spending that kind of money on a coat when the stock market had just dropped by about 5% and is still going down. Well, most of the people were older so hopefully they had taken their money out of the market. Also as a post-script: I said I was happy that the ballot referendums I had been following (like prop 2 in CA) went my way, but obviously I wasn't paying attention to the gay marriage amendments which all went horribly wrong. Interesting insight into the election demographic.

Frogger watches with the kids

I mentioned how much I enjoyed watching the election results with my sister and her kids, and now here is the artist's rendering of the event. Fabulous. It was the first time that the kids have really been old enough to get into the whole process, and they were very enthusiastic. My niece did a great job painting her face, one side red with "McCain" written on it and the other blue with "Obama" and a purple strip down the middle. I would post it except for my strict policy against posting pictures of people, and also the photo really didn't show off her beautiful face in its best light. I'm pretty amazed that Obama won, and especially because it was all over so quickly with no dragged out ballot counts. I had a dream last night that there was a recount and McCain actually won, horrors! I turned on the tv as soon as I got up to make sure it hadn't happened. Everyone I know has been having nightmares recently, I think it is the generally unsettled times.

Full pond from above

Hello, President-elect Obama! (He's a big fan of my blog, you know, reads it every day.) I'm also psyched and rather shocked that all of the other votes that I was tracking came out the way I was hoping, including Proposition 2 in California. Let's make factory farming illegal across the country! Why is it OK to torture a pig in a pen just because you are planning to eat it? Why are farm animals legally exempt from the protection we give house pets? I bet I could be prosecuted if I started abusing my frogs, and yet literally thousand of farm animals are tourtured to death every day in this country and nobody seems to be aware of it ... Ok, that's my rant, and I'm sticking to it. As far as the pond goes, this photo is what my pond will look like from above when I get the leak fixed. Full of happy frogs and fishes and snails and assorted bugs living out their lives in safety and dignity, except for the occasional raccoon visit.

Cat n' frog

You can see the frog in the lower right hand corner of this photo, and obviously my handsome neighbor with the annoying voice in center stage. Cat doesn't notice frog at all, and if frog is aware of cat then perhaps he knows that not moving is the best strategy when it comes to furry predators. Of course the frog rarely moves anyway, his capacity for sitting absolutely still is amazing. The neighbor cat comes by every day for a drink, it's definitely part of his turf, although I don't know how Squeakers feels about that. I can't tell whether she has a crush on him or wants to kill him. It must be love. Today is very warm and I'm sure Squeakers was sitting at the window all annoyed that she can't go outside and soak it up which I'm at work and the frogs probably warmed up enough to come out of hibernation for the day. Too bad I can't just work from home next to the pond.

The other side

Not such a fabulous photo but it's to illustrate what I did with my Sunday morning, which was to dig out the outside of the pond (and then cut down the tomatoes and take in the poles and wire and plant all of my bulbs and do some much needed weeding.) I tried to photograph the water depth on both sides but then I gave up because now I am learning how difficult it is to take photos like that. Suffice to say that almost ALL of the water drained out of the new pool. I think it is two reasons: First of all, I realized that I was too lazy about getting rid of the dirt when I first built the new wall, and there isn't enough mortar where the wall meets the rock - Which is really where the worst problems occur because we all know that it is very difficult to bind together to things which are fundamentally different in nature. Secondly there are some areas in the wall which are too thin, between the rocks, but that's not a big problem because I can fill it up and see where it is leaching and then just slap some more mortar on it. I may even try painting the exterior with some sort of substance which is impenetrable to water, although any such substance is probably highly toxic. At any rate, I probably won't do any of this until spring.

Full new pool

I had to see what it would look like. And it looked good. But it didn't last. Turns out that the seal at the base is pretty bad, also a lot of areas in the new wall are too thin and bleed through really quickly. I kind of suspected it while I was filling the pool because it took a really long time, and seriously, not just because I am a mathematician, I had some sort of basic instinct about rate of flow out and rate of flow in, just like those word problems that everyone hates even though they instinctively can correctly solve them in real life without even thinking about it too hard. Why is that? I love word problems. And when I dug the dirt away from the side of the pool, there was clearly a positive water flow, there was even a whorl. More photos soon!

Drunken Fish

Actually more like drunken fools, as in who did you hang out with on Halloween? No, actually I had fun being a fool dancing like a fool with the fools but not a SINGLE frog costume to be seen. Lots of slutty nurses and slutty fairies and slutty witches etc. and a very nice costume made out of toothpicks and rubbber bands which showed some real creativity. I can't claim much of that for my costume, but at least it didn't fall off at any point in the evening. And a special thank you to the very nice young man who gave me and my neighbor a ride home even though it was completely out of his way and we are complete strangers and of course he will never read this blog. Why Boston doesn't keep the subways running until the bars close at 1:30 is beyond me, seems like a no-brainer, especially on a major party night. And then this morning I found a diminutive soft spoken Bangladeshi man in my drive way who was looking for the ocean, so I ended up giving him coffee and food and a ride to Revere Beach. He is on some sort of walk about, but I think God sent him to me as an antidote to the very arrogant young Indian entrepreneur I had the displeasure of meeting last night. Two very different vibes from the subcontinent.