Fountain & Fluff

The fountain

I went outside today--what was I thinking? It was at least 95 degrees F! Not ninety-five whiny-girl degrees, which is a measure of temperature I sometimes use and translates to about 89 degrees F--but ninety-five real degrees. Because it's now really and truly and irrefutably summer, which means I get a couple of good hours in the morning, a couple more in the evening, and I spend the rest of the time hibernating. And so much showering is required!

However, it was worth it: I had to break out the soldering iron, but the fountain is now hooked up and running! So much prettiness.

As a side note, the person who advised me on plumbing parts and flux and whether or not to use pipe cement at Lowes was this cute, round-cheeked little blond girl with a pixie cut, and then I (also a girl) came home a melted metal pipes together. I'm not sure if this is what Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Barbara Bodichon or Millicent Garrett Fawcett or Mary Wollstonecraft or Alice Paul or all of the rest were fighting for exactly, but the little 8-year-old version of myself who lives in my head was like,"Whoa! You know how to solder?! You know what soldering is?" She was very impressed. I think, all things considered, they would have been pleased too. And Amelia Bloomer would have been happy to see that I did it while wearing jeans. So that was nice.

A half-open Easter Lily

The Easter lily from a couple of years ago, which we transplanted to make way for the pond, is flourishing a bunch of heavy, fragrant, lemon-creamy trumpets. It's not exactly Easter now, but since many of our flowering plants have pooped out in Great Post-April Broil, I don't mind.


Other than the lilies, what is blooming now are some of our ass-kickingest roses ("Georgetown Tea," 'Belinda's Dream,' 'Cramoisi Superieur,' '4th of July,' 'Souvenir de la Malmaison,' 'Duchesse de Brabant,' 'Ducher,' and of course dear little 'Green Ice'), and our new pond plants.

I don't know how long they plan to keep this up, but both water lilies are blooming, some of the water poppies are blooming, one of the pickerels is blooming, and so is the biggest of the Thalias.

'Colorado' water lily in bloom

Water poppy in bloom

Two blooms at once on 'Colorado'

I am, however, a little worried about our 'Mrs. Perry D Slocum' lotus, which has a lot of chlorosis and even some necrosis (see in background, 4 pictures up). Web searches haven't brought up much. Could it be a pH problem? Will have to get a pH tester and see what that reveals.

The "Fluff" part of the blog title comes from our venerable old cottonwood tree, currently releasing waves and blizzards of aggravating white fuzz blobs that get up your nose and stick to everything and, as you can see above, litter the surface of the pond. Cottonwood, we adore you and we love what you do for the east side of the house, but for the love of Mike, please stop with the fluff already!