Pond emergency brings clarity | News, Sports, Jobs - Altoona Mirror
My wife and I are at the stage of life when people decide to either move to Florida, downsize and go into an assisted living home or dig in and stay put.
We chose to stay put.
When we considered downsizing, I took a hard look around and decided if you can't take it with you, I'm not going. We have so much stuff and it is so well organized that I have no intention of moving it.
Because my wife and I have no children, I figure it's the problem of whoever handles my estate when we go to the happy hunting ground. I can just hear the auctioneer saying, "I can't believe it, but here we have another box of …"
Although we visited several assisted living homes a couple of years ago, afternoon Jell-O and bingo games just didn't light my fire. Obviously there is nothing wrong with that lifestyle, and for some people it is heaven sent, but we decided to stick it out in our home, which does require maintenance and work. I never really minded it and in fact kind of enjoyed it, and my wife is a tremendous help.
However, I must admit that I had my doubts last week when things went haywire.
We live on several acres of large trees on top of a hill. Fall of course is a challenge when the leaves come down and it is a constant cleanup job. You may have raked up a few bags of leaves and put them on the curve for pickup, but unless you have to clean up several acres of leaves and compost them using a backhoe, you can't appreciate what I face every fall.
We also have a large fish pond that needs to be put to sleep every fall, which means a cleaning and installing a cover over the pond to keep the leaves out, which I had done.
All that remained was to pull the water pump, which I intended to do the next day.
However that evening Mother Nature decided to leave me with an end of year gift in the form of our recent snowfall.
The next morning, my wife came in the kitchen from her walk with her dog, Abbey, to announce, "I hate to mention this, but you better check the pond because there is a strange sound coming from the pile of snow where the pond used to be."
Digging down through the snow to the pond cover, I discovered to my horror that the strange sound was my pond pump, which had run out of water.
It seems a loose connection had resulted in pumping all the water out of the pond overnight. Staring back at me from a small puddle at the bottom of the pond were all of my fish in one squirming pile. There was so little water left that the fish had one cup they kept passing around between them just to stay alive. I knew they would not survive long under these conditions.
I went into panic mode when I found my all my garden hoses under the snow frozen. I got them thawed out in the laundry room tub filled with hot water so I could start to add some water from our well but leaving the laundry room a totally muddy mess. I would have to wait to clean it until later, time was critical for the fish.
While I was trying to get water added to the pond to save the fish, my wife was busy on the phone trying to get some emergency water delivered. Our niece Beth, and her husband, Joe Lansberry, showed up in the nick of time with a pickup truck complete with a huge tank and several hundred gallons of spring water. They were kind of like the cavalry riding in at the last minute to save the wagon train, which was me and I was busy trying to circle my one wagon.
It was a close call and made me momentarily question my decision to stay in our home with all the work involved, but I am not ready for the Jell-O express yet.
I am just thankful that we didn't have to serve fish for Thanksgiving dinner, and I am pretty sure the fish appreciated it as well.
This example also goes to prove that we all need to be thankful every day for family and friends who are there to help when needed.
John Kasun writes from his home in Duncansville where the work never stops but overall life is good.
Comments
Post a Comment