Water Day

Another 200lbs of flagstone - let that be a lesson to you. If you make a pond, buy more flagstone than you expect to need. Also picked up some cedar mulch. In the area around the stream, where I was trying a few riverstones, I will substitute cedar mulch perhaps. Should keep the weeds down too.

But I applied the water. Some tuning required, to keep the edges of the liner high enough here and there. It'll probably need some more tweaking, but it's fairly stable now.

It's full of murky water. Would have been good to wash each boulder and pebble, but that doesn't seem practical. I assume alot of the cloudy particulate matter will settle out. Of course, the pumb might stir it up again. Perhaps some will settle to the base of the stream too.

Not the loudest stream around. I decided the pump was too small, so moved from the medium pump to the large pump. Not too bad - hardly a torrent, but at $180, that's about as much as I want to spend on a pump, so perhaps will stop there. Got it up from gurgling to babbling on the universal stream chart. I'd love to get it to rushing. Perhaps I'll get some chunks of plastic to catch the water and make it splash into the pond itself at some point. More turbulence is needed.

But it's fairly nice now. Perhaps a fountain? Might be too tacky. I could use a basin under the liner for the top pond, and create more of a drop. That would make more noise then too.

Didn't get any plantings into the ground, nor the cedar mulch down, and it's supposed to be a couple of rainy days. Hope the berm holds up okay. The sooner I can get roots in there the better. Some decorative grass would be good too. I wonder if there's enough time left in the year to get it going - I'd suspect so.

Days Are Longer When You're Alone
My SO is down in Florida on biz, and so the days are longer. Their more longer from boredom if I don't keep busy, and they are longer with chores when I am keeping busy, leaving me super snoozy at the end of the day. That's how I feel now, ready to drop into bed. I don't know that Mr. Plato will be able to share much more than a sentence with me when I hit the hay.

He's gotten a bit rabid in one section, where he's talking about the making of philosophers and how to do it right. The really fascist sounding bit is where he talks about people getting a better education than they deserve, and how their thoughts and ideas are wrong when they get through it. Bizzare to think of children getting more education than they deserve. Not a reasonable perspective in a modern world. Presumably everyone is deserving of an education... except maybe my sister - man is that going to her 49 year old head. Each thing she learns she thinks is a wonderous discovery, which is fine on it's own, but man, some of it is super obvious stuff that she then preaches to the rest of the world like they are little people. You want to tell her "what - you didn't know that!?" to counter the condescending tone, but of course you can't. So the ego builds up as she learns obvious things that just a few years of open minded normal human life would teach you. Whew, that's going to be one annoying prof if she perseveres to that stage.

But back to Plato. It's commendable that anyone thought so much about this topic, but it's moved from a blueprint of the ultimate society, to a rant against the people who pissed him off in his society. Some wacky views of the world. Seems like he wanted people to agree with him, so what better approach that to write a book in the first person, with someone interjecting "Yes" and "You're right," and "Of course" after every point you make.

Oh well, in spite of my here and there reading time, I'm about 3/4 through it. I'll be glad to bring it to a conclusion and move on to something else.

Wrap
Well, my eyes are growing heavy and so I should wrap up. In light of that, here's your assignment for today. For a change it's not a 'right this minute' assignment, but it MUST be done today! When you go to bed tonight, your head will hit the pillow, and your assignment then kicks in. Close your eyes, and imagine, in real time - don't speed it up - imagine getting out of bed, putting on each piece of clothing, going to your front door, getting your shoes (and coat if necessary today) and unlocking your door, opening it and step by step walking around your block, back to your house and back to bed. Try and imagine every single step of the way.

Let me know tomorrow - did you do it? You fell asleep, right? How far did you get? It's a good exercise if you have trouble sleeping (never any of that with me! - though I do wake easy).