A Sunflower Doing What Sunflowers Do Best.

My artsy picture for today is a sunflower that Wendy planted in a box beside the pool. Click on the pic to enlarge it.
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Weird Reflections

When you look at an ordinary object, do you ever let your imagination go where it wants to go? The image your brain sees can be different than the mundane reality. In this case it's materialized in the top of our glass table on the back patio. You can see how people can fantasize Christ, The Madonna and other religious figures in worldly objects.

I took this whimsical image a little further and introduced clown-like elements to come up with one of my "artsy" pictures for today.

 In this iteration I combined one side with a mirror image of the same side to yield this interesting piece of weird art.

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Froggy Goes A Swimmin'

 

Our neighbour Gwyn has a small pond that used to be home to fish and frogs until the Great Blue Heron came along and enjoyed the "seafood buffet". Now whenever we get a frog in the pool, Wendy or Tim rescues the web-footed intruder and relocates it over to Gwyn's pond. It's a win, win, win. A pool, pond, frog, - all three winning situation.
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Our Dear Friend Pat's 90th at Blackfriar's Bistro...

 The "Circle of Friends" got together on the early celebration of Pat's 90th birthday.  The venue was the Blackfriar's Bistro in London ON.

Her birthday is actually next Wednesday the 30th, but who really cares, we had a great time.

Everybody has known each other for so long that it was like a family gathering. Our long table overtook half the tiny restaurant and the noise level increased to the point I wondered how the other patrons would cope, but no-one complained.

Pat looks so young!!!

A decadent chocolate cake followed a lovely lunch, which extended from 1 until 3:30 pm.

I suppose 90 candles would have run a little hot so 9 of them had to do.

As usual with this group, "a good time was had by all!".


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Female Pigeon Horntail

With our son Tim in the process of eliminating a huge stump in the back yard we disturbed this wood wasp, or Female Pigeon Horntail.
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Mice In My Car

Yesterday, at Costco I noticed the telltale signature of a mouse problem in my car. Crumbs of foam rubber from the underside of the passenger seat and some chewed paper and plastic bits. Upon further investigation, black pellets of mouse poop were discovered.

I readied my trusty mouse trap, adding a couple inches of water to the pail and slathering some fresh Kraft peanut butter to the spinning lemon bottle held in place by a coat-hanger.

By morning I had my catch. Not one but two adult mice so far. I'll leave the trap another night, just to be sure I got all the rodents. This is the simplest, most effective mouse trap I have ever used! I wonder how they got in?

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Benz to the Vet.

Staff remember Benz. In the past, Benz was not well-behaved (to put it mildly) at the London Cat Clinic but today he was a perfect gentleman.

He got his shots and a check-up and weighed in at 7.85 lb. which is less than half the weight (16.4 lb) of the stray cat "Itchy" which we had as a visitor at our home for a couple days. (They tell us "Itchy" is a new patient and is booked for a chip next week)

On the previous visits there were other cats waiting which did not go over well with Benz. He was nearly to the point of being uncontrollable. This time "the coast was clear".

Nice kitty!
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Pouring On The Coal

Wendy suggested we try the "coal" option on our new "Gas 2 Coal" BBQ. The roast is a beautiful 9.5 lb. pork butt shoulder. I added some hardwood to the coals and the resulting aroma is heavenly. We'll see how it tastes and I'll leave an UPDATE soon.

Mmmmm! Looking good at hour 1, running only on charcoal briquettes.

Hour 3 out of 8 and it's smoking up nicely.
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Temporarily Hosting A Stray Cat - "Itchy"

We live on a busy road and any animal running freely is at risk of being hit by a car. The other threat is the Coy Wolves. It's been two years since we lost our lovely cat Dash and we believe the coyotes got him.

Our boarder is a big guy, 16.5 lbs. very friendly and docile. He is also very clean and is obviously an "indoor" cat. I'm sure the coy wolves would find him easy prey.

We are keeping him in the basement, well isolated from our cat Benz, who would not take lightly to another cat in the house I'm afraid. This new guy, twice Benzy's size, has settled right in and seems to be very happy to just lie on the sofa and watch TV.

I stapled posters to the telephone poles out front and posted to London Lost Pets as well as Kijiji. We will take him over to the animal shelter tomorrow if we don't get any response.

UPDATE Tuesday and no response from my ads. We took the cat to the vet this morning to see if he had a chip. No luck. We are keeping him here for the time being... We'll see.

UPDATE:Tuesday morning, after we returned from the vet clinic to see if we could find a chip (no chip) the phone rang. A neighbour Yaga McInnes at 481 Upper Queen at Commissioner's called having seen the ad at londonlostpets.ca. The big guy is named "Itchy" and he comes from Newfie where he was quite accustomed to mooching his way around the neighbourhood, sometimes disappearing for a few days and returning. I warned her about the coyotes. She said she was going to get a chip implanted.

Map shows where "Itchy" lives. Far enough for a cat.

Our local Neighbourhood Watch obligingly sent my "found" poster to everyone on the street before finding out Itchy had been found. A second email was sent letting all the neighbours know he was home. Anyway... now everybody on the street will recognize Itchy if he escapes again. He is home and the story has a happy ending thanks to modern, digital communication.
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Outsmarting the Smart Meter

My son Tim keeps the pool crystal clear, but at a price. With rising electricity costs it's wise to analyze and perhaps modify your pool maintenance habits. Although not a lot of money in the big picture, all savings add up.

Originally, and for many years, I used to run the filter on the pool for 12 or more hours every day. Since the advent of the stupid "smart meter" we had selected the running time period to coincide with the "off peak" electric energy usage in the 12 hours between 7 pm and 7 am with the chlorinator duty-cycle dialed back well below 100%. 

When we visited our relatives last month in Belleville I was impressed by the pump on their new swimming pool. Denise showed me how the pump was equipped with a speed controller which allowed her to program three settings: 100% speed/power, 50% or 25% depending on pool loading and demand.

Our 3/4 hp pump and chlorinator still uses a substantial portion of our summer electricity as it consumes about .7 kilowatts per hour (kwh) or about $1.20 per day. This, I calculate, was adding nearly $40 to our monthly electric bill during the summer months.

Upon reading about these new (and initially expensive) pumps, I decided to try a new way of controlling our own pool. Instead of buying a new pump I decided to set my timer to run the pump only 25% of the previous time (3 hours). To compensate for the reduced time that the salt-water chlorinator actually produces chlorine, I reset the chlorinator to 100% duty cycle from its previous 25% to 40% setting. My new plan seems to be working. After a couple weeks running at 4 hours per night at 100% chlorine, my chlorine levels were still too high. I am now trying 3 hours per night and will check next week to see how the chlorine level is affected.

If I'm right, I can reduce my electric bill from $40 down to $10 or less. A substantial saving, without sacrificing chlorine levels and as a bonus, the wear and tear on the equipment is substantially reduced. This 25% plan will obviously only work for pools like ours, that receive minimal human use. I figured most of the time my filter is wasting energy, filtering perfectly clear water, still, some circulation is required to operate the chlorinator. If and when the pool is more heavily used, or when people visit, I can simply increase the time to 50% or even 100% to "shock" the pool, or even turn back the duty-cycle of the chlorinator if needed. We will see how it goes when we get our next electricity bill.

I should point out that the deluxe pump that Denise has is a 1.5 hp at full power. That's double my .75 hp pump. If I was to purchase one of these pumps at nearly $1500 my break even point, (if it could attain the same efficiency as my new plan) would take 50 months. Since we only get about 4 months per year, the payback time would be 12.5 seasons. It would take me 'til 2029 to break even. Too long for this old fart.
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We Have A Stoat Eating Our Chipmunks

A Stoat (Mustela erminea) aka. Ermine is living in our woodpile. He/she is VERY QUICK.  The pictures aren't too great as I grabbed my camera and had the wrong settings. Just as I was trying to snap a pic. a nearby raptor let out a shriek and the Stoat went into hiding. We haven't seen a chipmunk in over a week. Oh well, maybe he'll get the mice?

Read about this cute, yet aggressive little predator:  CLICK HERE
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Boating... "Phoenix at the "Rez"

We drove up to the Kettle Point Indian Reserve marina where Doug keeps his 29 Phoenix.

 The weather looked a little threatening but it was warm and not much wind.

Our old friends Chris and Mike joined us.

The native run marina offers normal amenities and is located in a beautiful location on the point.

It was nice to get out on the lake and the old Phoenix rocketed along very well at nearly 30 mph at wide-open-throttle with the twin Crusaders humming. We drifted back towards port snacking and talking, then enjoyed a shore bbq back at the dock before returning home to London.

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Tabanus Atratus

I snapped a pic of one of the most sinister looking flies you will ever see.

"Darth Vader?"

 The females of Tabanus atratus feed on mammalian blood, while males, which lack mandibles, feed on nectar and plant juices (Hutchinson, 1999). A blood meal is necessary in order for females to nourish their developing eggs (Strother, 2000). Horseflies are diurnal, usually feed during the day (Greenvalley, 2000). The mouthparts are made of six piercing organs: two mandibles; two maxillae; hypopharynx; and a labrum-epipharynx. The mandibles and the maxillae have sharp serrated teeth on them, which are used for puncturing the skin and rupturing blood vessels (Roberts and Janovy, 2000). The labrum then functions to lap up the pool of blood that is formed from the bite, otherwise known as telmophagy (Hutchinson, 1999). When searching for a host, females are attracted to large, dark, moving objects and to CO2. Larvae feed voraciously on other insect larvae, other invertebrates and small vertebrates (Strother, 2000). ("Welcome to the World of the Horseflies", 2000; Hutchinson, 1999; Roberts and Janovy Jr., 2000; Strother, 2000)

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A Pool Visitor...

 Look who stopped by the pool this morning at 7:30 am. A Great Blue Heron scanning for fish.

Nothing doin' here. Fishponds watch out!.
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Bayfield River and Bridge 1908

For your enjoyment, here's an "artsified" version of a very old post card from the year 1908.
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