Is something fishy?

When I'm at my desk, I sit next to a sad little aquarium, with a rotating population of fish.  Here last Feb. an orange fish supported the one with black tail and fins, a support fish I called it.  They weren't even the same species, but the black tailed guy wasn't feeling very well.

A boy with a big fish!  Sepia Saturday has given me such a good prompt.  Too bad nobody I know snapped a picture of anyone with a fish they'd caught. (Besides a facebook friend who had caught 2 or 3 nice whoppers in his pond this week...but it's his story, not mine!)

How about M. C. Escher for a few fish?

And then there are commercial fishermen, who go out off the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and truck their fresh catch to Asheville, where my friend, Roger, picks up his haul and sells at several Tailgate Markets all through the spring, summer and fall.  He's selling still at an indoor market locally in Black Mountain during the winter also.  Whenever I can afford fresh fish, I am so happy to buy some.  I once asked how the fishermen catch the swordfish that he sells, as I only know of it as a deep-water fish that is line-caught.  He wasn't sure himself.

 Panther (cat) also likes to look at the aquarium sometimes.  Once she knocked over the tin of their  food and got it to spill on the floor, where she enjoyed the treat of eating fish food.  She keeps waiting for that to happen again!

A friend lives on Hwy 9 south of town (on the Daniel Boone Trail) and has this in his back yard.  I just was trolling through (sorry about that) some old photos, when I found these shots...of a trout farm which is no longer in use.

Whoever built these stairstep pools was into the decorative arts as well as raising trout.

 OK, that's enough for this week!  I'll have another post on next Saturday, for you to also chase the meme and see what the other Sepians have come up with.

Today's quote:

The title comes from one of the book’s chapters, in which Carson paints a picture of a future spring morning without birdsong. “No witchcraft,” Carson writes, “no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.” Rachel Carson in Silent Spring

The continuation of life

No, I'm not talking about life after death.
But how life itself continues...which is pretty miraculous in itself.

For my little existence, I noticed a few things yesterday, which remind me of how life wants to continue itself.

The aquarium.

First, there's the sun at it's lowest in the sky today, and for the shortest amount of sunshine as well.
The photo above shows at the base of the small table, a spot of sunshine hitting that cat's toy.  This is the furthest into my apartment that the sun will hit all year.  Remind you of anything? How about Newgrange, or Stonehenge?  Well, this was closer to noon than dawn, but I like marking (via photos) this point of furthest tilt of the earth, everywhere I live on Winter Solstice.

Then back to life wanting it's own survival.  I put the divider back into the tank (bright turquoise vertical against the sides, clear perforated plastic from front to back). And I put a very pregnant female guppy onto the side in isolation. Yep, in the morning, hiding in lots of plastic weeds, were a bunch of new babies.  I swept momma out with the net, and put her on the other side with the rest of the adults. And then tried watching and counting the babies.

I think it's a bakers dozen.

I have to take the top off the aquarium to even see them, putting the light source to the back of the tank rather than the top.

They may not be cuddly like puppies and kittens, but they are cute in their miniature little way.  Just a tail with eyes, and then those little side flippers going like a hummingbird's wings, propelling them around from here to there, not showing that they know a thing yet.  They didn't even know to eat the first time I fed them.  But they are catching on.

This is the thrill, that new life can still happen, given the circumstances to support it.

I was thinking the other day how I continue the blood of my mothers, the ancestors from whom I am descended. And not just metaphorically.  My mother's blood came to me through the placenta in the womb.  And her mother's came to her before she was born.  We women have a continuous line of life blood, through each daughter to the next. 

I'd heard how girl babies already have all the cells which will become their eggs in their ovaries before they were born.  But I'd never thought of how the blood continues to flow through each of us as well.

More thoughts tomorrow on the miracle of life surviving for itself.

Today's Quote:

Take full account of the excellencies which you possess, and in gratitude remember how you would hanker after them, if you had them not.

Marcus Aurelius

Bare basics

No pretty fake plants.  Not much gravel.  There are 4 fish which survived the last few weeks in a quart size mason jar.  They are a bit overwhelmed with all this space...and perhaps it's still too cold for them.  The light is going to be their source of heat, because I'm pretty sure the heater isn't working right.  I couldn't even leave the pump going because one of these little guys almost got sucked into it.  After all, they haven't had to deal with moving water in that jar.  They sure had some gunk in it too, so I couldn't even just pour them into the clean aquarium...I poured them into a net, then let them free in the new water.  I know, it should sit overnight, but it was treated to kill the chlorine.  Maybe they'll survive.  You can tell I am not heavily invested in this at this point.

I carried half-buckets-full of water to empty it, and then again to fill it.  I wore a mask while dealing with the old water, and the bleach water which I used to hopefully kill the algae that has been haunting me for months.  That's another reason there are no plastic plants.  I didn't feel like bleaching them all again.

So half of my goals for today have been completed!  That's really something I'm proud of.  I tried to download Windows 10, but for some reason my computer thought I really wanted to update Windows 8.1.  Since it is supposedly not going to be supported by updates any more, I was surprised to get all these updates.

Every morning when I turn on the computer, it wants to install Windows 10.  When I try to do it when I actually want to, nope.  It has disappeared.  I click on "Windows 10 install" and get Windows 8.1 updates.  You know the story.  Whenever I do get to this BIG thing that Windows 10 is all about, I will be dancing on the ceiling.  Fred Astaire did, so why can't I?

Joy is getting something accomplished that you can put your feet up and smile and look at.  A clean fish tank is really pleasing right now.

Quote for today:

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. Rabindranath Tagore