Oh dear, I am dreadfully behind..This was a few weeks ago when we were getting ready for couples bunko in the back yard.   Kelley and KC sure worked hard to get the chicken coop finished and the yard in shape. Rick came over and replaced the broken lights in the rock garden.  He is a peach. 

KC power washed everything  and helped me with the tables and chairs. Kelley helped me with the food...made wonderful salsa and grilled the chicken. They are just the best!

Then Candice came over and helped me get all the food prepared and ready to serve.  We did Cafe Rio kind of salads.  There was kind of a lot to putting them together, but they were yummy!.

We had a nice evening...the weather was perfect,  KC was a good sport and substituted with Candice  for Jane and Sheri.  It was fun to have them.   They ended up winning the bunko prize! 

  

 KC took apart the swing set.  It was kind of hard because the wood had shrunk around the bolts so you couldn't get a wrench in there to unscrew the bolts.

Kelley came up and just kind of folded the boards up.

We had been trying to get the water in the pond to clear up,  it had gone pretty murky since we had to turn the waterfall off and get rid of the wasps.  We had been using the pond sweetener faithfully, but didn't really see much improvement.  The guy at the pond store gave me all these water plants that he said would for sure do the trick.  They look good, but didn't clean up the water.  So we decided to empty the pond and put clean water in.  Kelley hooked a big hose up by the pump and got the water draining out.  It got down below the pump and we thought we had better stop there so we didn't hurt any fish.  So then we filled it back up again.  We couldn't really tell what it was looking like because we were doing this in the night,  but when we went out in the morning,  it was still pretty cloudy.    Not a lot we could do at that point. 

There are about 50 new little fish in the pond now.  When we first noticed them, they were tiny black ones.  Now they have got to be about two inches and have turned orange. There is also one of the older fish that has gotten so fat it can't hardly move anymore.  I really don't know how it hasn't exploded.  We thought it was pregnant for a while, but that has been since the spring and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger.  I'm going to try to get a picture of it.  It is pretty freaky.  I was talking to  the guy at the pond store about it and he said it must have a tumor.  He said to check it's fins to see if they are ragged or beat up looking.  He said that is a sign that it is really sick.  I don't really think I can get close enough to it to check it's fins...I feel bad for it, but what do you do?   

The guy at the pond store keeps telling me that the murky pond is the best situation for the fish.  He said they love all the green stuff that makes the pond look dirty, and if we wanted our fish to spawn, we should leave it alone. Then he gives me a science lecture about the biological make up of the pond.   Ha!  He is a real nature nut!  I told him our fish were spawning just fine, and I wanted a nice clean pond.  He said, well, OK,  If you got to...put a cup of this stuff in the pond each day and it will clear it up..  I think he sabotaged our pond sweetener because it really hasn't cleared up much at all.  It looks so pretty though.  I love to sit outside and listen to the waterfall and the flowers are all blooming so pretty now. I sure do love the summer months!