We have blue ones, black and white ones, yellow bellied, and yellow tailed and those birds are just the new ones who have never visited our yard before.... at least visited when we were watching. Of course the permanent residents are here in abundance. I have noticed that four or five Robin's have also been hang'n close which is unusual in that they usually only stop by for a drink and occasional bath. I believe all this new activity is because we still have about a foot of snow on the ground and they can't get to their regular winter chow. So I've been filling the feeder twice a day to help the circus stay hale and happy during this bird famine.
This morning the thermometer was showing -13 degrees. This isn't a record for Grand Junction but is in the top five for all time low... got that? Because of the cold the pond has been doing some strange things.
Yesterday I topped up the water level. This morning I looked out and the level was about 8 or 9 inches below full. To put that another way, I could hear the pump suck'n air. This is bad. Very bad especially when pumps are in the $700 range. So I rushed to the garage and got the hose, hooked it up and started filling the pond. After about 15 minutes the water level was still low. It appeared the level had not risen but maybe an inch or two at the most. Where was all the water going?
I started looking for overflows or leaks when I discovered the bridge pond was getting water ON TOP OF THE ICE. What's that about? The water was coming over No Name Falls and the ice hole was there but overflowing. I then realized the water flowing over Humpty Dumpty Falls was iced up restricting the flow thus causing a backup. This was caused when the flow was diminished because of the low supply of water to the pump. It's all related.
I got out my handy dandy 6 foot steel persuader and started to chip away at the ice on Humpty Dumpty Falls. It was slow going as I couldn't get real close because of the snow. I finally got the hose and just directed the flow to the falls and the warmer water coming from the hose melted enough ice to lower the water level in the Bridge Pond.
So now all is well with the pond. As I write this the temperature is a balmy 15 degrees an increase of about 30 degrees from this morning. Very unusual weather for this area.... of course everywhere I've ever lived people have always commented on the unusual weather.
If your getting confused by which falls is which and what pond is where you can see it all with a mouse click HERE to see pictures and descriptions... very neat.
As an aside; I was going to tell you about cannons and cannon balls and then explain about brass monkeys and stacking cannon balls on the monkeys and then the cold coming, the brass monkeys changing temperature causing the monkeys to warp like a cookie flat in an oven, and spilling the cannon balls... this of course has become known as "freezing the balls off a brass monkey." I also found that the story isn't true so I just wrote about the cold and now I'm feeling obliged to share the story with you anyway. FWIW Ha!
I also found the largest cannon ever built was in the late 17th century and named the Tsar Cannon. It weighted 12 ton+ and had a bore caliber of 35 inches. Now that was a cannon ball. I wonder how they ever got it loaded into the cannon.
No comments:
Post a Comment