Ar Wahan's home office water cooler

Not a lot happened.  Baby steps are being made in clearing garden beds and getting them replanted.  Beetles are still being picked off flowers and dumped into soapy water.  This morning there were only a couple of dozen beetles, not 100's. Progress!  I'm finding that especially the cucumber beetles are hatching in the late afternoon and evening. If I do a round of bug removal at sunset I get most or all of them. 
The cows have finally moved into the pasture around the house.  Apparently there is still lots of water in the stream along with piles of feed, so no cows have hiked all the way up to the house for water.  When they have eaten all the yummy (possibly still faintly green) grass near the creek, and perhaps when it gets a little warmer and they want the breeze on our knoll; I'm sure they will come up here. 
To prepare for the cows the fish needed to be moved. Cows regularly drink the stock tanks, even the 500 gallon one, dry.  This is not good for fish health.  Yesterday early morning I bailed out and dumped the 170 gallon tank.  There should have been two fish in it. There were none. I was pretty sure that one fish disappeared several weeks ago, but the other was seen three days prior.  Down at the 500 gallon tank I couldn't see any of the 3 fish that should have been there even though I'd siphoned a lot of water out. The water was pretty murky.  This morning there was a glimpse of one fish.  Other chores came first, but along about noon I bailed the water level down to about 6 inches and eventually captured two fish.  They are now getting used to cleaner water in their bucket.  In a few minutes I'll go set them loose in the 170 gallon tank.  It is sparkling clean having been scraped and scrubbed and refilled.  As a predator preventive, and to give them a bit of shade, I'm going to put a shade cloth tent over the tank.   It would probably be best to adopt out the two remaining fish, they are at about 3 1/2 to 4 inches and have become extremely enticing as lunch for a variety of critters. 

I had wanted to weed whack the fence between the horse pastures and the cows, but having been sick last week I hired two guys to do it.  They did a good job.  I did find a downed tree that had to be cut off the fence and got that taken care of.  SOP is to walk all fences before turning on the power, and then walk them again once the power is on listening for the snap of a loose connection. Yesterday, while checking the fence, I found a second tree on the fence.  This morning Kim came to be my safety monitor while I ran the chainsaw. It only took a few minutes to get the tree out of the way.   Kim mentioned it would be nice to have a branch that was hanging into the arena pruned up so I went off to get the pole saw.  The pole saw (chainsaw) dumped 1/4 cup of gas on the driveway gravel, which it REALLY should not have done.  Off to the repair shop with it!  An hour later one of the two weed whackers, which was running perfectly day before yesterday, refused to start.  It's selector switch: off, start, run; just flopped around.  With two broken items I suspect I should drive to Cloverdale and get them into the shop.  

Yesterday morning was consumed by a trip to Fort Bragg to have my back worked on.  Both back and my neck feel better; along with my thumb which entirely quit hurting.  While at Dr Richard's I asked if there was a pet shop that sold fish.  I stopped by a really clean and neat feed store and picked up 6 tiny feeder goldfish.  They are happily swimming around in Firefly's water tank.  They are way too small to be tempting as a meal. Once the cows are gone for the summer some of them can go to the overflow tank. That will be a month or more from now. Along with goldfish there are mosquito fish available, but goldfish are much tougher fish. Goldfish will survive long, long after mosquito fish die and they do just as good a job at eating up mosquito larva. 
 The most recent Dahlia to open is lopsided but really lovely.  Definitely one I'll keep. 

The white rose (ok, pale yellow center) has new buds!!  While it was struggling away trying to stay alive in it's old, shady location; battling oak tree roots for moisture; it could barely bloom at all. Some years it didn't bloom. This year, in its new, sunny location with plenty of water, it has sent out a second pair of buds {Edit: There are four!!}.  This further confirms my suspicion that it is a climbing rose, not a rambling rose, especially since the roses are on new growth.  After nosing around the internet I'm pretty sure it is a Lamarque Rose.  Bred in 1830.  It will be fun to see how it does, and whether we are a tad hot for it (in full sun) or not.