So the spring winds are here. These are somewhat more brisker than a breeze but don’t (usually) rise to monsoon levels. Normally they blow the leaves and flowers off the shrubbery and the fruit off the trees, with the aim of dumping all that stuff in the natives’ pools.
Over the past week or ten days, though, we’ve had some passing stiff blows. Conveniently, these have provided an opportunity to test the latest panty-hose approach to pool filtration. And, by golly, it works!
Picked up some cheap hose on sale at a grocery store the other day. Lobbed off the legs, tied them off, and tied the resulting bag to the leaf-catcher. The booty-bag vacuumed up the leaves and twigs in about twenty seconds, without once threatening to slip off the device and dump its cargo all over the bottom of the pool. The one I secured inside the skimmer basket filter also stayed firmly in place; it was chuckablock full of leaves and blossoms this morning.
The trick is to disconnect Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner whilst the wind blows. This keeps him from choking on twigs, flying pecan shells, and the like. Dust, twigs, palm tree cuttings, and heavier leaves drop to the bottom of the pool; small blossoms and the BB-like palm-tree seeds alight on the surface and flat. After the wind dies down, one then turns on the pump, which sucks the floating debris into the skimmer basket and, by way of the current it sets up, pushes everything on the bottom into a convenient pile in one spot. Hence: the garden-hose driven leaf-catcher, which easily lifts the mound off the bottom and sucks it into the booty-bag.
Despite the half-bushel or so of plant debris, the pool is still holding its own against the recurring mustard algae, which by this time last year was joyously coating the walls with moss.
At one point earlier this spring, I was reminded that when I first moved into this house, I was so delighted with the pool that I used to sweep it down every day or so. Of late, that enthusiasm has flagged — not so much out of boredom with the pool but because the year of surgeries broke me of habits that entailed even small amounts of physical exertion and because of late the editorial workload has been such that I just flat haven’t had time to fiddle with the yard and the pool.
LOL! A friend of mine, a middling prominent music critic, once remarked that self-employment allows you to set your own hours: any 18 hours of the day you please.
Yea, verily.
When I moved into the house, lo these many years ago, I had…well, you know…a job. (Urk!) I worked regular hours, and those hours did not start at 6:30 or 7 a.m. and run all the way through to 11 p.m.
So, back in the day, I had lots of time to break out the pool brush and run it up and down the walls. It only takes about 10 minutes, once you get yourself off the dime. So there really was no problem with doing a few light maintenance chores before leaving for work.
Today when a job or three are in-house, it’s roll out of the sack, grab the computer, answer the mail, do the books, pay the bills, work on someone’s copy — all before breakfast. Feed the dogs, bolt down some toast and coffee, maybe write a blog post (maybe not), post some PR to Facebook & Twitter, edit copy or compile index entries…allllll day long.
Heh. No wonder I never get anything done!
