No fishies. Well, maybe one or three, it's hard to tell. But out of a total of 10 little fishies introduced to the pond o death, glimpsing one or two is rather disappointing. Wood says it's cats. I have to reluctantly agree, but doubts linger because 1: the fish are really small, large guppy size and 2: no evidence of cat squatting, ie no disturbed shrubbery or bark, no carcasses, no cat shit or cat fur dangling from the mouths of dogs I JUST DON'T KNOW.
The suspicion is pretty strong, but being born in Missouri is really a curse sometimes, and I find myself wishing for a pond cam, just for proof.
At least the water is clear, and the fountains sound lovely.

Oppenheimer the Gardener is at it again.
The pond is back up and running, with the addition of water plants and 5 (count 'em) little fishies.
If I still have any fishies in a month, I'll be a somewhat happy camper.

We made a semiannual trek through the Bellagio conservatory/gardens a few weeks ago. Boy, were we SURPRISED! The Boy was thrilled no end to find model trains all over the place. Up, down, through the trees, through tunnels and towns, it was a delight for his little autistic perseveration. They had his favorite, a BNSF, nearly close enough to touch.



Here's a village scene, with the favorite. We stood and watched this little cutie for some time.


Same train, different angle, with tunnel.



The ladybug trolley scurried by a wooden boot/house, underneath a great castle.


And the crowning piece, a miniature Bellagio, complete with fountains. All these buildings and bridges were made of wood and plant parts. Some were pine cone leaves/blades, twigs, seed pods, acorn cups, pieces of bark, all craftily glued together in amazing detail.
We enjoyed it so much we went back the next day, too.

Volunteer tomatoes were doing great there in the ersatz mulch pile...till I found a suicide caterpiller munching away. So I pulled it off (no easy feat-they're tenacious) and put it under the bird feeder, thinking that was that.

Well, that was a few days ago. Today I was admiring my (ahem) handiwork and there were not one, but SIX caterpillars on my now leafless tomatoes. Since I had not invested a lot either monetarily nor emotionally on these catepillar targets, I pulled them up and put plants and all under the bird feeder (Fresh Meat!).

Wood was there as I was pulling and placing the target tomatoes, and as I was gazing in dismay at the now very murky green pond, he asked me,

"Do you think Oppenheimer was a gardener?"

"The Father of the Bomb?" I asked, thinking Wood might be more confused than I.

"Yeah," he said, " 'I am become Death, destroyer of worlds' and all that".

"Shut. Up."

So. I got called to work for a "bring-back" the other night. A bring-back is a procedure done on a patient (usually open heart) when their condition indicates that there may be excessive bleeding or sudden clotting of a graft and they would benefit from a re-exploration of the chest. It is usually a quick procedure involving re-opening the sternum, removing a bunch of clots or cauterizing the underside of the ribcage where the sternal wires go inbetween the ribs and around the sternum.
I had scrubbed for this case earlier in the day, and when I came in to the lounge on my way to the dressing room, the surgeon told me that this would be a real quick case, just a pacer wire exchange. Apparently the patient (who had artery bypasses and a mitral valve repair) was not benefitting from the temporary pacing wires that had been placed earlier and was experiencing low blood pressure and erratic rhythm.
We get in there and do a minimal opening, just enough to see the old wire and poke in a new one, and the patient is just not responding-poor rhythm, low pressure.
"FUCK!" shouts the surgeon. This is not unusual for this surgeon, who is of, um, mediterranean descent by way of, um, New York, I think, and, at any rate, is rather loud and boisterous on most good days and here it was midnight-thirty and he'd done a full day's work and had another to go. "FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING FUCK FUCK FUCKER!".
"WHAT THE FUCK" said the anestheologist.
"DOUBLE FUCK" I said.
And the patient got better.
And we all felt better.