Daddy Big Bucks

Posted on 09/11/2025 by Grumpa Joe

Daily writing prompt
Name the most expensive personal item you’ve ever purchased (not your home or car).
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This is the first time I have chosen to accept the daily writing challenge from WordPress. I’m having trouble remembering what I bought for myself over the years, but they will come to me as I write. There are several things which I consider to be over priced items that I bought for me. Number one is my recumbent bicycle, topping out at $3500. I can swear that no one ever rode that bike but me. The next item has to be my fishponds. There were two. The first one, I dug, lined, and put flagstone rocks around the perimeter. The cost was lower than that of my bike, but I can’t put a price on my labor. Next was pond number two. Since I couldn’t bring the first one with me when I moved to another house I had to build it. By the time this took place I had grown much older and I decided to hire a company to create the pond of my dreams. I choose number one as my favorite. It was totally designed and built by me, and I had the most success raising Koi and Comet goldfish in that mini-lake. Pond number two was designed by me, but I relied heavily on the contractor to know what he was doing. As a result, pond 2 is shallower and relies on a commercial filter, which after a few years of raising fish, I have deemed to be adequate only for a table top goldfish bowl. I have had this pond for seventeen years and have enjoyed it to the max, and decree that I spent $12000 wisely.

Pond-1 shown in its garden walk beauty one month before Barbd DIes

Big Al and his Comet buddies enjoying a feast of fish pellets

I could delve into the intricacies of design that make Pond-2 inferior to Pond-1, but I’ll pass because Pond-2 is aesthetically more pleasing than Pond-1. Overall, the two ponds were fascinating, and I wouldn’t want to live in a home where I couldn’t raise water lilies and Comet goldfish.

One feature that I had in Pond-1 was a Garden Railway. Railroading is fun, but I decided that the hobby was too time-consuming, and I cut back to design a layout that encircles the garden around the pond. That provided me with projects galore: Like a bridge to cross a river, a trestle to climb a grade, and a tunnel to bypass a waterfall. The railroad was always a hit when our yard was included on the Prestwick Garden Guild Garden walk.

There are two memories I cannot forget that occurred in Pond-1. The first was watching a rather large frog catch a Goldfinch for its meal. The frogs developed a habit of laying in wait on the edge of the stream, and the birds would come to the stream to bath and to drink. This Gold Finch got a little bit too close to the frog and Zip, he went into the frog head first The second was the sight of a mink escaping the pond with my prize Koi in its jaws. I really liked that Koi. The kids named him Big-Al because he had grown to become over fifteen inches long and would eat out of their hands. The mink was not much larger than Big Al when I last saw them disappear into the underbrush of the back garden.

Pond-2 after shelling out $12,000 to complete and before planting
Pond-2 is shown as the central showpiece of the Monet Vision.

I thought of replacing Big Al by buying a Koi of his size, but changed my mind when I saw the price tag, which was close to a thousand dollars. The mink decided to have Koi for supper rather than a much cheaper and smaller Comet. Right about that time, my wife Barbara had a heart attack and the focus of my life changed radically.

After this period of my life, the most significant gifts I bought for myself were trips to Arizona for the winter and three tours to Canada.

Filed under: Biography, Birds, Fish, Garden, Pond | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

Lovely’s Lamborghini

Posted on 02/11/2025 by Grumpa Joe

One thing I benefited from marrying Lovely is a rusty old wagon with three wheels. I don’t know what possessed me to keep it lying around, but I did. After looking at this junky Radio Flyer for three years, I decided it was time to either give it a wheel and make it useful or trash it. Why I chose the wheel option, I’ll never know, but a visit to a psychiatrist might enlighten me.

I looked everywhere for one wheel, but did not find one. Finally, I resorted to Amazon and found wheels galore. What I didn’t find was a perfect match. Being an engineer, I needed the fix to be balanced from side to side. A matched pair of wheels arrived several days later, and I went to work.

Removing the unmatched wheel from the axle was a headache that involved pounding and making a lot of noise. The action loosened a pile of rust from the bed due to all the shock and vibration, and caused a bunch of new holes to appear. Eventually, with the application of copious amounts of WD-40, the old wheel came off.

The two new wheels on the old axle made the wagon look sexy. There was only one cotter pin and I needed two, one for each wheel. With a little persuasion a nail fell out of my miscellaneous box to fill the need. A twist of the nail into a curve kept the new wheel in place. On TV all the old car restorations involve adding new paint, and paint shelf in my shop yielded a can of sky blue and another of white. The blue covered the rusty bed and the white made the hub caps look new. It was done, and available to haul stuff around the garden.

Next, I dragged the Flyer out to the garden and summoned Lovely to examine her wagon. Oh my god! She exclaimed, “A Lamborghini,” and we doubled over in laughter.

This weekend, I put the Lamborghini to use by hauling two cement blocks that had been lying next to the Lambo, alongside the house, for more years than the Lambo had sat rusting. The trip was but a few yards to the far end of the pond. The blocks provide a base for the new aerator pump that pushes air into the water to keep the fish alive through the winter. Maybe this fall, I will avoid the mass fish kill that has happened for the past three years.

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Take Baby Steps, Fast

Posted on 06/06/2023 by Grumpa Joe

This has been a disappointing day. It began with sunshine and quickly morphed into a grey cloudy day with occasional sprinkles. Needless to say the temperature has been cool. I love warm, to very warm days like those we had a couple of weeks ago. There is an upside to this kind of day, it is great for the garden. The soil remains damp which helps the seeds that Lovely planted germinate. Several of her plots are showing signs of major growth. I even sowed some flower seeds around the perimeter of her garden and they too are sprouting. Hopefully they will mature and yield some colorful blooms.

About a month ago I dumped two dozen comet goldfish into the pond and now I watch them grow in size and reduce in numbers. The most I can count is eleven, so where are the remaining thirteen? Most likely in the belly of a bright green frog that lays in wait at the edge of the water. I’m tempted to dump another dozen or two into the water to become cousins to the ones that are now three times the size of what they were when they were first released.

After I finish this post I will cut up a potato and plant the eyes in a pot just to see what transpires.

My latest art project is progressing although rather slowly. I’m beginning to lose interest. I have learned something though, that is, that every time I make my own pattern I make it too complicated. As an artist I am a realist and try to make my pieces accurate. That means I wind up with too many small pieces of complicated shapes in an attempt to capture the subject realistically. Oh well, I keep telling myself to take baby steps, which is what I do. The trick is to take baby steps but fast.

Filed under: Biography, Fish, Garden, Hobby, Pond | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

Cost to Grow vs Buy

Posted on 06/05/2023 by Grumpa Joe

Expanding the garden at my age only makes me appreciate tomatoes and cucumbers at the grocery store. It is so easy to pick from the pile in the vegetable section compared to picking the same item from a vine that you planted and nurtured, watered, and dusted for bugs. (Oops, I wasn’t supposed to say dusted for bugs). If Lovely finds out I did such a thing she won’t let me eat any of the fruits of her labor.

My part of the garden involves digging, spreading compost, and warding off critters with suitable rabbit deterrents such as fencing. The remainder is up to Lovely. She plants, waters, weeds, and shoos away bugs and birds. I have donated two home made whirly gigs as bird deterrents. I don’t really believe they will scare a hungry bird away from succulent greenery, but it sounds good.

My plan to cure Lovely’s ravishing appetite for onions, cucumber, beets, and sorrel is to expand the space she has to plant. This will be the third expansion since we have been together. (When will I learn that only a 100,000 acre ranch will do the trick.) The first plot was a dainty five foot by eight foot area. The second step added a second plot of five by ten, this time I am going ten foot by twenty, an expansion of five times more space. than the original.

Lovely’s Garden

I promise myself not to keep track of the cost of these vegetables because it includes a love factor that can’t be monetized. Besides the more money she spends on veggie plants the more I will spend for flowers in my little world of the Monet Vision.

One Small Room In Grumpa Joe’s Garden

This week, my big accomplishment was to open the pond. That means dredging the bottom of a thick, stinky layer of fermenting leaves, and then re-installing the pump, and pray that is still works. It did, but the whole effort took two days which equals five hours total of physical labor. Each time I went out with a promise not to spend more than one hour, but each time the job required twice that much time. Each day after completing a specific task, I came in and collapsed in front of my computer for the remainder of the day. I once had a boss who said the job expands with the amount of time available to do the job. As I age, this adage makes more and more sense.

I went out of my way to run to PetsMart to buy some fish, and bought two dozen comets that measure about one inch long. Of course, after stabilizing the water temperature in the bag, I let them loose and they disappeared instantly. It’ll give me something to do everyday, that is, to watch the water to spot one. In the past it was two weeks before I finally saw a fish, and they were about twice the size as they were when I released them them. By the end of summer, about five of them will be four inches long and the rest will be much shorter. Come November, when the leaves drop from the trees into Lake Joe, and begin to decay, the process will consume the oxygen in the water, and the fish will die. In the fifteen years that I’ve been raising goldfish in this lake, I have only been able to winter them successfully twice. In my first pond, I never lost more than four fish over the winter, and I never bought new fish, they propagated. The difference is the depth of the water, aeration, and the filtration system. In the first pond I designed and built all the components, and this pond was done by a professional. It might be time to dig it up and start all over with the same amateur design I used for pond #1.

POND NUMBER ONE
POND NUMBER TWO

This story began with me whining about how much work there is to expand the vegetable garden, and it ends with a Nova like burst of energy required to rebuild a pond from scratch, It isn’t going to happen, I’ll spend five bucks every year to add new goldfish just like I do with the flowers.

Filed under: Biography, Fish, Garden, Pond | 2 Comments »

Spring is in the Air

Posted on 14/03/2023 by Grumpa Joe

Officially, it is still seven days away from the formal end of winter, but spring is in the air. Winter will lose the battle and allow the sun to return and warm the planet again. One would think that with all of the freezing and warming that planet Earth would begin to crack, maybe it does. Earthquakes are caused by the tectonic plates shifting under us. Who knows, I may be on to something, and win a Pulitzer prize for geologic science.

What I do know is that the trees and shrubs are beginning to bud, although ever so slightly. My desire to sit at the computer to write for my blog is waning as I find myself staring out the window at the sunny days. The to-do list for the garden is building in my mind, and I have some really nice projects lined up. The problem will be to find the physical energy to do them. At the moment the ground is still frozen and hard as granite in the morning, and becomes mushy soft and slippery (that’s what she said) when the day heats up. So I sit at the computer and ponder how I will clean the pond to restock it with fish while daydreaming about the flowers I will plant to make the Monet Vision a vision. Each day I retire totally worn out and ready for a ten hour nap.

I can’t really complain about our winter this year, because I only had to shovel snow once. Most winters the shoveling is a daily task. Same goes for low temperatures. This thing about global warming may be real, except our winters vary from year to year, and I’ll never believe that man made global warming is a real thing. It is more like a communist plot to over throw the civilized world. With summer coming even President Joe Biden will be able to walk out to the street to buy his ice cream cones from local Mexican street vendors. If we are very lucky, he will wander off and get lost.

My memory is beginning to fade. I am actively making dates to conduct vision screenings at schools and then forgetting all about them. This morning the contact at a pre-school reminded me that she will see me tomorrow. After seeing my deer in the headlights look she followed up with a reminder that I made the date to screen all of her kids and that today was just the Tuesday-Thursday classes, and tomorrow will be the Monday-Wednesday classes. If anything scares the hell out of me it is the thought of losing my memory. Once it begins it tends to go fast. Seven days to go and counting fast.

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