{"id":37333,"date":"2026-07-02T05:00:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T09:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=37333"},"modified":"2026-07-02T09:48:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T13:48:09","slug":"all-in-all-very-entertaining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/02\/all-in-all-very-entertaining\/","title":{"rendered":"All in All, Very Entertaining"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ah, July First.\u00a0 The end of winter here in Dunwich and the season of heat and oppressive humidity.\u00a0 Glorious!\u00a0 All week the grandkids have been swimming around in the pool which mercifully opened this year without a leak in the liner.\u00a0 Last year ended with two patches applied and a warning that when winter ended it might be time to replace the liner; a very expensive and difficult procedure that would tax the almost non-existent competence of our local pool professional (and I use this word extremely facetiously) to its limit and beyond.\u00a0 I told Matt, the pool guy. that I would think about replacing it in September.\u00a0 But I\u2019m not sure.\u00a0 I might roll the dice again in 2027.\u00a0 We\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m off from work for the next week and a half and I\u2019m almost as giddy as a school boy on the first day of summer.\u00a0 I walked around and checked the milkweed to see if any monarch caterpillars were chewing on the leaves.\u00a0 While I didn\u2019t find any, I did see a monarch butterfly flitting around the yard and took that as a good sign.\u00a0 I also haven\u2019t seen any preying mantis egg sacs or baby mantids anywhere and am starting to believe that the mantids that I bought the last few years aren\u2019t capable of surviving the Dunwich winter.\u00a0 I\u2019ll have to look into that.\u00a0 I have seen them naturally occurring in the area but I was hoping that my seeding of the area with egg sacs would have made them more prevalent.<\/p>\n

Camera Girl has now completely conditioned her pond fish to expect a feeding at about six in the evening after our dinner.\u00a0 Tonight when she arrived at the pond the water was already in motion and when she tossed in the food pellets it reminded me of what used to happen on the old Addams Family television show when Morticia would toss a leg of lamb into the piranha tank and the fish would roil the water for a few moments and a glistening white bone would be ejected at high speed out of the tank stripped clean.\u00a0 That\u2019s kind of like what her pond looks like at feeding time.\u00a0 The damn things actually make audible noise.\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t want to be an innocent grasshopper or cricket that accidentally fell into that death trap at feeding time.\u00a0 It\u2019s slightly unnerving.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m currently using my push mower to cut the grass in the fields and it\u2019s taking many hours.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been too unmotivated to change the oil on the riding mower so I\u2019m paying for my laziness.\u00a0 But I figure it\u2019ll help me achieve my summer weight loss goal.\u00a0 If nothing else I\u2019m definitely sweating off an enormous amount of water which must be good exercise for my sweat glands.\u00a0 I noticed that I was having to double cut the grass to get it right.\u00a0 But then I discovered that pulling it backward over the grass did a much better job so I dragged the mower behind me backward all the time.\u00a0 Of course, you can only use one arm when dragging it behind you, so I came up with a routine to alternate arms.\u00a0 And that had its own subtleties.\u00a0 All in all, hand mowing was very entertaining.\u00a0 A good first day of summer.<\/p>\n

Reactions<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ed Brault\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It looks like New England is getting even more heat than here in South Carolina. I do remember a few HOT summers up in Danvers, and sweltering near DC when I was in college. Here we just expect it, do the yardwork before the Sun clears the trees, and keep in the shade and A\/C until dusk.<\/strong>
\nIf you think your wife\u2019s fish pond look like the Addams Family, you should see the Great Ocean Tank at the SC Aquarium. 50 species totaling 550 various sized critters from all levels of the Food Chain, roiling the waters as we toss sixty pounds of mackerel, squid, shrimp, and smelt on the surface. The sharks are polite, they know they will have a separate dining service an hour later. Our 240-pound sea turtle, on the other hand, is the Diva of the Tank, and even the feeding frenzy parts before her as she glides over for her smelt-cicles (she loves it frozen, nice and crunchy). We do NOT have divers in the water at feeding time, although we do occasionally have to go in to recover a Chum Bucket that got loose from its line.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TomD<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ah, July First.\u00a0 The end of winter here in Dunwich and the season of heat and oppressive humidity.\u00a0 Glorious!\u00a0 All week the grandkids have been<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,288,3366,1263],"tags":[3341,254,342],"class_list":["post-37333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-humor","category-life-in-dunwich","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","tag-dunwich","tag-july","tag-new-england-summer"],"yoast_head":"\nAll in All, Very Entertaining - Orion's Cold Fire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/02\/all-in-all-very-entertaining\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"All in All, Very Entertaining - 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