Cycles

It's already October. When you're a teacher, once school starts back, everything else falls away. No pun intended. I go into hyper-focus for a few weeks. This year was very tough. First, we had the house in major disarray. Second, I was teaching new classes. Third, I was in a new room, in a new building and none of my things had been brought over. Fourth, the team I had worked with for seven years was broken up and some of the people went to different districts. I finally feel like I can breathe.
This summer was completely focused on remodeling so I never had time to garden. Lots of plants got trampled by workers or buried under debris. I did remember to take pictures of the pond, though. The fish we added in the spring got big and had babies. The only one that survived last year, a tiny sliver of a brown fish, survive and prospered. I saw him a few weeks later, fat and sleek, swimming among the orange ones. That made me feel a little less like a total evil person for letting all the other ones perish. At least some of the genes live on. Yesterday the kids and I cleaned out the floating plants and put them in the compost pile. We were going to finish the yard today, but it is raining and chilly. So I'll have to post gardening pictures from the summer instead.

I pruned some of the lower limbs of the big trees in the backyard and the pond got more sun. I think that is why I had so many more waterlily blooms this year.


I have pinks, yellow and white waterlilies, but I forget their names. One is a hot pink, one is a pale pink. The yellow one is a smaller variety.





I've had a pine (a Scotch or an Austrian, I can't recall which, but it is a variety that is not very good for bonsai)in a pot for several years. I decided to make an attempt to make it bend down. So in my typical lazy-ass gardening fashion, I tied some twine to a rock and hoped for the best.