Seasonal stuff
Our first autumn rain began to fall this afternoon. It was a cool rain, but just now I had to shut the living-room window because the temperature dropped suddenly, as they said it would.
I have given up on the water feature that I've been working on for what, two months or more? I bought a big, blue, fiberglass pot several months ago (about 18 inches tall and a foot wide at the widest) and figured I'd attach a solar-powered pump to the bottom, fill it with water, and have the pump circulate the water back into the pot so it could flow back over the edges and back to the pump.
I bought some special water-tight putty where you mix two types of putty, mold it over the hole, then let it harden. The basin at the bottom was the overflow dish for a large outdoor pot I bought many years ago, and I bought some nickel-sized gravel to support the weight of the pot.
That effort failed because the pump was not strong enough to overcome the weight of that much water.
So I bought a stronger pump, this one plug-in. It seemed to work, because where I set it up, I was able to leave the water in the pot overnight with the pump unplugged, and none leaked out. So I dug a hole and set the basin in. As I moved the pot, I hit the pump and dislodged it from the putty. After I patched the leak, the pump would no longer hold the water: when unplugged, the water would rush out the intakes.
So I got an even stronger pump and tried the same thing, and the water leaked out again. And it wasn't really strong enough, either.
So on pump four I tried again. This one had a hose adapter attachment, which I ignored at first. I set it up as before, and the water leaked out again, but I couldn't tell if it was the pump or not. I stopped working on it when the sun went down on some Saturday and inadvertently left the pump plugged in. On Monday after work, I discovered what I'd done. I rushed the pump into the house, where it was plenty warm and the housing was distorted. I dunked it in a bowl of water and tested it. The freaking thing worked still!
Unfortunately, the heat of the pump and the weight of the water caused the bottom of the pot to crack, because the pump was bearing most of the weight. I realized that the gravel was too unstable to hold the weight (I'll bet it's more than 90 lbs full). It was also leaking out through the pump again, so I wondered if it might help if I put a tube up through the pot so that the tube ended about 3/4 up the pot so only a small column of water would be pushing down on the pump (and yes, I know that depth determines pressure, not width, but the sides slope in toward the bottom). I attached a hose end to some poly pipe I had left over from my sprinkling system and used the hose adapter attachment. I supported the pot with some old pavers the previous owners had left behind. It still leaked, and besides that, the pavers raised the pot too high off the ground and the water didn't seem to be flowing into the pot very fast.
So I bought a small bucket and some metal mesh (something fabric), and my third tube of that putty. I dug the hole deeper, stuck the bucket in, and cut the mesh to fit over the hole with a hole for the tube and another for the power cord. I used an old flower stake, a plastic-coated hollow metal rod, cut in pieces to support the pot (the mesh was too weak).
This time, the pump wasn't working at all. At. All. It had seemed to be pooping out on the last test, so I guess it was damaged by being left on after all. But I'm not going to buy another pump this season. Four is enough at this point. I will probably use the earlier ones for other water features later on in my life. Or not. I give up. And it's time to be wrapping things up in the garden anyway.
My Ramona clematis has produced a single bloom for no apparent reason. The Maxmillian sunflowers have just started to bloom, and of the 3 dozen glad bulbs I planted in early summer, only 9 have bloomed: 5 pink, 2 dark red, one white with blue throat, and one peach, though I planted all different kinds of colors. Most of them came up, but because of inadequate water or sun or nutrients, they didn't bloom.
I have given up on the water feature that I've been working on for what, two months or more? I bought a big, blue, fiberglass pot several months ago (about 18 inches tall and a foot wide at the widest) and figured I'd attach a solar-powered pump to the bottom, fill it with water, and have the pump circulate the water back into the pot so it could flow back over the edges and back to the pump.
I bought some special water-tight putty where you mix two types of putty, mold it over the hole, then let it harden. The basin at the bottom was the overflow dish for a large outdoor pot I bought many years ago, and I bought some nickel-sized gravel to support the weight of the pot.
That effort failed because the pump was not strong enough to overcome the weight of that much water.
So I bought a stronger pump, this one plug-in. It seemed to work, because where I set it up, I was able to leave the water in the pot overnight with the pump unplugged, and none leaked out. So I dug a hole and set the basin in. As I moved the pot, I hit the pump and dislodged it from the putty. After I patched the leak, the pump would no longer hold the water: when unplugged, the water would rush out the intakes.
So I got an even stronger pump and tried the same thing, and the water leaked out again. And it wasn't really strong enough, either.
So on pump four I tried again. This one had a hose adapter attachment, which I ignored at first. I set it up as before, and the water leaked out again, but I couldn't tell if it was the pump or not. I stopped working on it when the sun went down on some Saturday and inadvertently left the pump plugged in. On Monday after work, I discovered what I'd done. I rushed the pump into the house, where it was plenty warm and the housing was distorted. I dunked it in a bowl of water and tested it. The freaking thing worked still!
Unfortunately, the heat of the pump and the weight of the water caused the bottom of the pot to crack, because the pump was bearing most of the weight. I realized that the gravel was too unstable to hold the weight (I'll bet it's more than 90 lbs full). It was also leaking out through the pump again, so I wondered if it might help if I put a tube up through the pot so that the tube ended about 3/4 up the pot so only a small column of water would be pushing down on the pump (and yes, I know that depth determines pressure, not width, but the sides slope in toward the bottom). I attached a hose end to some poly pipe I had left over from my sprinkling system and used the hose adapter attachment. I supported the pot with some old pavers the previous owners had left behind. It still leaked, and besides that, the pavers raised the pot too high off the ground and the water didn't seem to be flowing into the pot very fast.
So I bought a small bucket and some metal mesh (something fabric), and my third tube of that putty. I dug the hole deeper, stuck the bucket in, and cut the mesh to fit over the hole with a hole for the tube and another for the power cord. I used an old flower stake, a plastic-coated hollow metal rod, cut in pieces to support the pot (the mesh was too weak).
This time, the pump wasn't working at all. At. All. It had seemed to be pooping out on the last test, so I guess it was damaged by being left on after all. But I'm not going to buy another pump this season. Four is enough at this point. I will probably use the earlier ones for other water features later on in my life. Or not. I give up. And it's time to be wrapping things up in the garden anyway.
My Ramona clematis has produced a single bloom for no apparent reason. The Maxmillian sunflowers have just started to bloom, and of the 3 dozen glad bulbs I planted in early summer, only 9 have bloomed: 5 pink, 2 dark red, one white with blue throat, and one peach, though I planted all different kinds of colors. Most of them came up, but because of inadequate water or sun or nutrients, they didn't bloom.