My tiny camera doesn’t take great pix, but Jane has some, and between us we have pix that aren’t hazy. This is, fwiw, the view from my workstation, and the quince is in bloom. THe shiny patch is reflection of light on the water. I have a great window. 
This is going on in front: the new crabapple and the cherry tree are doing their thing.
And the new Japanese Maple, an Emperor 1, with the redbud just visible beyond it.
Now to the fishes: these are taken through the bags—it’s never good to open a bag until you’re pretty well ready to put the fish in.
first pix is of the first 3, which include a pale gold shortfin like Ari and a platinum butterfly-fin like Maddy and an orange butterfly-fin with white edges, who is the Wesley type. We have also a couple of orange and white spots: they were both personable, so they came home with us. One is a gin rin type, sparkle scales, the other plain, both vying for the name of Renji, and then we have one like the first one we lost—Ichigo, a fish with a red bonnet. The water is murky, we had a storm last night and the netting collapsed in one place, but we can fix that—soon as I can walk straight. Which may be today.
Jane’s pix are much better. Wiishu helped.
It’s nice knowing the pond is occupied again. We don’t expect to see them until I can get the water clear, and nowhere in the region is that happening very fast. But it’ll get there. The fishes are all about 3″ body size, and they’ve got 5000 gallons and a lot of rocks to hide in, so they’ll be safe. Feeding them is going to be interesting, since we can’t see where they are, but I figure feeding stinky food will help them find it. And any worm that falls in is very likely doomed.
This is not the whole company—there will be a Banichi, a Jago, a Stevie, and a Byakuya, but we have to wait and find them.
I love the way you described it. It sounds pretty and peaceful.
It’s funny how personality shows up in something so small. Original Renji was the class clown and troublemaker, and when we went to catch this one, he’d skip above the water to evade the net, a real character, in a 12 foot long tank. The little gold one nearly escaped the floating observation pan, and we’d have played hob finding her in the 200 others, but we’d have looked til we did. We looked at 3 of her general type, but she was the one we went with. Others are calm. But feistiness is sometimes a survival advantage, if there’s a predator.
How exciting! — of course, you’re starting from scratch again, and you pick and choose, and build slowly. But, fishes! I’m glad you found some good ones. Long may they wave!
Maybe name one of the escape artists Boji?
Oh, that would be funny.
It’s funny the pictures you get in your mind. For some reason I always imagine your place is in the middle of the wilds (possibly because you mention raccoons, which are the height of exoticism. ;p ) Then I see pictures and it’s not the wilds at all.
The blossom trees are somehow magical. Thank you for sharing pictures.
Raccoons are now urban wildlife, like skunks and coyotes. [And possibly opossums, which have been moving north along I-5 for some years –uncommon in my neighbourhood but present]. Anyway we have to be pretty careful how we put the garbage out. But the aforementioned critters are probably better adapted to city living than we are.
Seems that the animals that prosper in urban environments are always the generalist omnivores — rats, coons, possums, coyotes, foxes, grackles, jays, gulls, — the opportunists that will eat anything. Add to that list feral dogs and cats. Possums are not the brightest bulbs in that chandelier, but they have a nasty bite and can climb like nobody’s business — and they’re about as omnivorous as they come.
We’re way out in the middle of the flat lands here (TX panhandle) yet we have possums, and we made the news once when a fox ran loose in the stadium during a televised football game — on Fox network, no less! ( http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2016/10/15/13294022/texas-tech-fox-on-the-field-again ).
My parents’ house, out in the middle of the South Plains, miles from any town, had possums and skunks. I watched a full-grown (possibly elderly) possum climbing up the fence to the bird feeder. (It had only half a tail; the rest was missing.) I also remember finding a dead badger in the bar ditch when mowing, and admiring its front claws before rolling it onto a burlap bag (also in the bar ditch; we lived on FM179) and dragging it out of the way.
We are within walking distance (a fair hike) of downtown Spokane, and the other side of the fence, about fifteen feet away, is one of the city’s main arterials, with fire engines, ambulances, etc—our splashing waterfall and fence and trees wall that out.
A small enclave of serenity in the middle of the urban environment. As long as you don’t have the Guild traipsing though in the middle of the night!
That’s where Shu comes in…..attack cat extraordinaire….he comes up to you like he wants you to pet him, but then, suddenly he springs his trap…..
Don’t forget Sei, radar cat extraordinaire.
“A small enclave of Serenity,” is of course how I read that. So are there Fireflies? ;D Or coats of a brownish color?
Hah, I like the Boji idea.
My two felines are being extra clingy / wanting affection lately. Probably getting a vibe from me after the tooth was pulled. Just now feeling good enough to think of going out and meeting neighbors around the complex this weekend or during the week, early evenings. there’s a family or two who have a bunch of kids, mostly boys, and their dad or whoever, who’ve played basketball or soccer out there, all this past week. Lots of laughing, yelling, etc., having good fun. Sounds so good that as much not a sports fan as I am, I want to meet them and watch and cheer ’em on, talk some, get to know them. Don’t know if my current eyesight would let me play, especially around dusk or at night. My old stable level was semi-OK to play basketball, but I will have to relearn the rules. Volleyball worked. Soccer, so-so, because there’s more tracking the ball through space from kicks, but at least it’s mostly on the ground, unlike American football, which, uh, is out for me. (And baseball and softball, I can’t really do. If I even punt, or connect the bat with the ball, or catch, it is sheer chance, not any ability to see it.)
So they sound like good neighbors, a good dad / uncle whoever, good ids having a good time. — I am not sure how they’re getting in enough time for homework, but I will presume it happens. Not sure how many families are playing, but I want to get to know them soon.
I know a few of my neighbors on a first-name basis. AS for sports, there are some games played inside and outside the Paralympics, which are played by blindfolded folks, visually-impaired or not. I’d like to try beep baseball, which has spotters on the field to warn of collisions, and a beeping ball. Most likely I’ll try in the fall, after the very hot desert summer.
@Teresa – Hey, that’s very cool. I’ve seen film/video of kids playing beep ball, but I’ve never done it. I think fully-sighted and many legally-blind folks (like me) would need to use the blindfold to help concentrate on the clues of the sound direction.
I went to regular classes with the regular ids, instead of special ed or a blind school. There is at least Chris (Criss?) Cole in Austin. I’m not sure if they have a branch in Houston. I’m familiar with the Houston Lighthouse. Back in jr. high and high school, I had adaptive P.E. a couple of years, wit a male and female coach / OT/PT pro. The others were a very impaired partially deaf/blind girl and a boy with CP with leg braces and a paraplegic boy in a wheelchair. That was great, one area where being with other handicapped kids helped a lot. It also was a chance for some f the other boys in my class to (finally) get the idea that I didn’t just have bad eyesight, I really was handicapped like those other kids. (I got dissed by the boys in regular P.E., and I fired back at them for it. I think it was the first time some of them really ever got the extent of my eyesight or that I wasn’t just some klutzy, nerdy boy who was very bad at sports and had really thick glasses and a little telescope. Heh. Things improved after that. Word must ave gotten around, and some attitude adjustments for some of them. — Uh, and hey, despite how most kids act in school, most also grew out of it by high school. I still (not very often) get flak from adults who clearly have never thought about it or been around anyone with a handicap or long-term condition or injury. Most people are fine, and some are downright graceful about it, so that when I run into someone truly good about it, I sometimes ask if they have had training or if they have known someone. Kids, though, often need an attitude adjustment when it’s just kid on kid. Some are good, some are not. I never minded honest questions and curiosity, though. Some kids and adults are smart enough to want to learn and understand when they encounter someone and something they don’t know about. I like that.
CommentWell, we seem to have had a lot of common experiences. I, too, never went to a school for the blind. I attended adaptive PE as well. I am totally blind, which makes my disability visible and obvious to most sighted people. I have a blog on wordpress called Spirit of 42 (named after Hitchhiker’s Guide, not Jackie Robinson 🙂 ) on which I’ve posted a sort of mini-column called Short Bus Tales. It kind of petered out, but it’s still waiting for me to write some more.
Hey, cool, Teresa. 🙂 I’ll look up your blog. — I’m currently going through getting my case re-established with my state’s Division for Blind Services (recently swallowed up by the Texas Workforce Commission), and applying for Social Security Disability, as well as awaiting a referral to find out if I’m a good candidate for cataract surgery. If so, it should return me to my previous level of legal blindness, more or less, which would be a big improvement over what’s going on now. Monday (tomorrow) I get to hail a cab at random and go fr a day-long assessment from the Div. of Blind Svcs. Hoping it’ll go well. Take care!
I know which page you’re on there. Here’s hoping it all goes well.