Latest Water Activities

Aloha everyone, the summer is drawing to a close and I (Merlin) figured I'd better drop a few lines and updates here. Emily is still driving to Vegas 4 to 5 days a week for her message therapy schooling. She is about half way through the program which concludes towards the end of December. She's like the valedictorian of her class cuz she's pretty much brilliant and gives awesome massages.
We made it out to Lake Mead a couple times lately via Boulder City Marina. Cousins Eric and Scott Hardy have some skis and a boat and all the toys. Emily learned how to single or slalom ski and of course it was easier for her. Eric and Scott are already professionals at wake boarding and can jump the wake with a few other tricks and maneuvers in the process. Emily's brother Evan came too and pulled off a flip on the wake board though the landing was a little sketchy.
Rick and his friends and I went to the reservoir last Saturday with my surf board and his four wheeler and he pulled me through the water from the beach. It was nice to get up again. To bad my arms are weak now and I can't paddle worth crap - lucky for me the 4-wheeler did all the work.

In other news, I've had an irrigation leak in the backyard under some pomegranate trees. The water has been coming out of the ground from around an air tube. It had gotten a lot worse in August so one Friday afternoon I started digging down to see if I could find the hole and repair it. I dug about six feet down all the way to the main pipe and found that the air tube wasn't sealed on to the main pipe very well and that the irrigation company would have to come repair it. Normally digging that much out would have been a headache of a job but after doing so much computer work every day it felt nice doing some real masculine work and I felt much more manly upon completion of the pit.
Now I thought I had timed it so that the irrigation was off during the weekend, but sometimes it's just random and just my luck - it came on that night with more furry now and flooded the yard real good which wasn't such a bad thing I guess. Robert and Rick were down over the weekend and took advantage of the new pool that I had dug. I got a hold of someone from the irrigation and they turned it off then came and repaired it early the following week.
The fish pond and water fountain in the front yard are still looking good and the fish (my little babies) are still alive and growing. I have a few gold fish, sarassa comets and a Japanese Koi. I like to spend a bit more time working in the pond then the rest of the yard. It's like my little piece of Hawaii. Earlier in the summer the lily pads blossomed real nicely - click on my photo at lower-right and you can probably see the yellow & white blossoms in the pads. I also picked up some floating plants (Blue Shellflower Water Hyacinths) last spring that have multiplied. I pushed them up toward the fountain so the lily pads would have room to grow. They blossomed beautiful blue-purple peddles a few days ago and I need to get some new photos of them. You can see them getting high in the photo below with Emily and (Drum roll.... ANEPO!) Yep, our little Anepo came to visit from Hawaii. She was visiting Jared in Arizona and the Bachelor family here in Moapa and she spent an afternoon with us. Anyway if anyone wants some floating water Hyacinths give me a hollar. I've got too many and need to start thinning them. They are pretty green and really nice when they blossom and they do pretty well in the desert environment (providing they are floating in water).