Saturday, May 7, 2011

My Free Koi And Pond Plants Trip

3 weeks ago (at least), I saw an ad running in Craigslist for free Koi. This person was shutting down their pond and they wanted to give them away (my kind of price). I responded to that ad immediately but never heard back from anyone. I brushed it off and out of my mind, no biggies, I have enough fish - but - these were smaller ones. I have enough big fishies - up to almost 20 inches, I need smaller fishies.

Well, today I am going through my email and was done, actually, with it. I refreshed it to find a new one. This was that person, who had never responded to me, telling me she had shut down her pond today, she had spent all morning catching the fish, they were in a plastic bin, please come get them.

Just like that. I write her back, okay, I'll come and get them! She writes back with her phone number and awayyyyy we goooooooo! It was a fairly good drive out into the east valley. She said they live off of a very small, dirt road. So, I'm looking around for the address, there are only a few houses on this road. At the end of the road is what I would consider to be a mini castle. I didn't figure it was that place, but I was wrong. This house was HUGE!! The main house - at least 5,000 square feet and the guest house the size of my house - 2,000 square feet anyway. It had 2, huge horse pastures, a swimming pool the likes I have never seen before, a horse barn/hotel - also huge - another area to run horses, and of course, a pond. For the size of everything else around there, it was interesting to see this rather small pond. She had all but completely drained it in order to catch the fish.

I saw the Koi: QUITE the haul. I know what these suckers cost both on Craigslist and at Petsmart - I ended up with around $250 worth of Koi ranging in size from 2 inches to about 6 inches.

That wasn't all. She asked me if I wanted her plants. I thought, not really, I have a lot of them already. But, she had some different plants that I don't have. Well, they're free plus a HUGE water lily - that thing has huge leaves on it. Couldn't say no to that, especially considering the fact that I just scored a 400 gallon horse trough that is going to serve as my above ground pond. My above ground pond that I have now is working - but it really isn't made to be above ground. I have to figure out how to get that trough from work to home, but when I do, I'm going to test it - make sure it doesn't leak - and then fill it with water. I will transfer everything from the plastic pond over to the trough.

That may take a bit of time, of course, with everything that has to be done to make that happen, but I already have everything I need. I bought the trough from the City of Mesa - they sell surplus at a facility where I also happen to go somewhat frequently making deliveries. That trough had been sitting out there a while, no-one rushing to buy it, so I offered almost half of what they were asking for it. I will sell my above ground one for the same that I bought the trough - try to anyway - and recoup the "loss". I have 2 other ponds that I am going to sell as well. Those 2 I decided I don't really need and don't want 5 ponds running on my property, 3 is enough.

I'm considering selling a couple of the larger Koi - only because they don't seem to have enough room even though it's in the "bigger" pond. However, I am going to wait and see if they might do okay in the 400 gallon horse trough which will give them a lot more room to move around in.

The only downside to today's affair? Getting those plants out of that pond. I had no idea I was going to score plants and had to wash my shoes, plus my pants are covered with bottom-of-pond-muck stuff. In other words, I would have dressed for the occasion, including old boots if I had known.

My excitement for the day, lol.

ben

Saturday 5/7/2011

Last night, just before going to bed, I left a nice message for everyone out on the kitchen island counter. In 36 point type, bold and underlined, the title of the message is: FINAL NOTICE.

You see, on Wednesday night at 11:30 pm, someone slammed the back door so hard it woke me up out of a deep sleep and yes, I was extremely unhappy about it. In fact, I got very angry considering I have already left a note about this a week or two ago and everyone agreed to tone things down.

That same night, someone was opening and closing cabinet doors - loudly - at about 2:30 am. I went to work that next morning on about - 3 to 4 hours of sleep. Try going to work on that kind of sleep. Yeah, not fun. This notice spelled it out. If it happens again, I'm going to drag my @$$ out of bed, go out and find out who's making the noise and issue a 30 day eviction notice and I won't be changing my mind once that notice is issued.

I've been rather cranky this last week because of the noise issues and not getting enough sleep. The crankier I am, the more blunt and curt the notice will be written.

I slept in this morning is all I can further say about that situation.

Weekend. No clue. I mean, this situation with the neighbors calling the police if the air doesn't smell right is really starting to get annoying to say the least. Am I supposed to just not go to the east side of my property to make those people happy? I think not.

I did, however, find the community mediation thing online that the supervisor was referring to concerning mediation with neighbors to try and work out the issues. It isn't what the officer said it was and it would entail a 2 to 3 hours "meeting" with the neighbors and a mediator. I have serious doubts that they would even agree to try it, number one and number two I doubt anything would be worked out. I'm just waiting for them to call the cops again and having the cops come over here giving me a hard time. I'm simply going to video all of it, call the headquarters while the police are here and if i have to, call the news. The police should really be giving THEM a hard time for excessively calling the cops. The last time they were here, those people made up a completely fabricated story.

Isn't it strange? There is a drought in Texas but the Mississippi is over-flooding and threatening a lot of homes. One place in the US has too much water, another place doesn't have near enough. I believe we are still in a drought - too - but it's been going on for a long, long time and the water conservation officials have been dealing with this problem for quite a long time now. Yes, I just checked it, almost our entire state has some kind of water deficiency, ranging from abnormally dry to extreme drought, the only thing we don't have is the highest level of "exceptional".

The entire state of Texas is in some form of drought, with a large percentage of it being either extreme or exceptional. No wonder the governor was asking people to pray.

It brings back the stories of rain when I was travelling the US with that missionary group. I can remember on several occasions that places we were going to were in the middle of a drought. Rain followed us everywhere we went. It was absurd. I mean, places that hadn't had rain in months would get days and days worth. We would arrive and I would always start talking to the locals. Once place in particular was full of farmland and the farmers were afraid they were going to lose their crops. I informed them that it would start raining within a couple of days and they would have more water than they knew what to do with.

There was no rain in the forecast and it hadn't rained there in something like 2 months. The skies were clear, no clouds, there wasn't a hint of rain. But I knew it was coming. It always came. They didn't know what to think of my statements. Older gentlemen standing there scratching their heads. I just told them to prepare for a lot of water falling from the skies, cause' it was going to happen.

2 days later, it began raining. A week later, the rain had not subsided. It REALLY made our missionary ventures quite - unappealing - at times because everything we did was outside. Those farmers came back and started attending our meetings. They thanked me for the rain, of which I could hardly take credit for. I had to inform them that the good Lord causes it to rain on the just and unjust alike, thank Him and of course - yet another opportunity to speak about the goodness of our Lord.

That was hardly the only place we went where rain arrived with us - in fact - literally - it just followed us everywhere.

Anyway, that governor has the right idea: pray!! Fast and pray.

Well, I just went to the store and got my first haul of 11 pounds of ground beef at $1.47 per pound. I intend on getting at least 50 pounds of it. It comes in family packs and you can only get 2 per visit, but I have until Tuesday. I'm going to divide them up into approximate 1 pound portions and freeze most of it.

Enough.

 Sunday - early 20 minutes until departure time.  I don't much care for delivery on Sundays for it takes a while to get security to the ...