I was only home ten minutes for the Easter long weekend & my Sister calls me to say she's on her way to pick me up. A local shopping centre, The Southgate Plaza, has a fireworks display every year & they shoot them off the roof while everyone watches from the car park & this was her destination.

I've never heard about it & even after the event, there hasn't been a word said about it! It did happen however & by the number of people attending, it must have been mentioned somewhere. (After some googling, it officially called - The 8th Annual Sensational Sky Spectacular!)

Anyway, I was picked up, we collected some fish & chips on the way & then found prime car park real estate for the big show.

At a touch after nine, we were all welcomed over the PA system & fifteen minutes of fireworks were launched.







I've never had a camera on me during a fireworks display before, so it was good to finally capture some. They had to be zoomed shots otherwise the car park lights were all in the way. Click 'em for big versions.

With no announcement to end the show, everyone clambered into their cars & within ten minutes, the car park was nearly empty & probably a few minutes later, you'd be hard pressed to work out if anything had happened at all!

 

I don't really have a good spot for a laundry basket in my bathroom, but the bath is a great void which I never use for it's intended purpose either. Therefore, the two have combined to be where I throw my clothes before scooping them into the washing machine.

Anyway, I was in the shower & through the shower screen I see the following in the bath;

 

& who knows how long this will last!

Over on the right is the new twitter feed. Hopefully, I get around to updating it more often than the very irregular posts here.

But what's the bet I don't!?

 

Goldfish are either quite robust or very fickle. You can drive them around in a plastic bag when you first buy them & they really don't get fussed, but introduce something new into their environment & they tend to freak out & hell, it's possible for the little buggers to die from the stress!

Therefore introducing a sizable quantity of sand into the pond they call home is probably not the best idea.

The area around the pond is nicely covered with plant-life including some very cool palms & the previous owner installed a sprinkler system, which also has one nozzle spraying water directly into the pond. Leave it all running for a few minutes & everything gets a good drink & the pond's water level rises for the fishies.

I plugged in the hose after I got home from work & ran inside to change my clothes. A few minutes later, I walked back outside to see water flowing everywhere it shouldn't. Upon turning off the water & inspecting the source, the first section of the watering system had blown out, sending a jet through the ground & pushing sand directly into the pond.



The fish had already retreated to the very edges where the duckweed held back the sand & they definitely weren't happy with the situation. One was even squirming about & doing back-flips, while the others looked on trying to work out what the hell was going on.

After stupidly thinking the sand would fall to the bottom & waiting way too long, I eventually took notice of the distress of the fish & started bucketing the water onto my lawns & other plants while refilling the pond with fresh water.

Dozens of buckets later, it was possible once more to see the rocks on the bottom. It still took a couple of days for the remaining sand to settle & the fish have since forgiven me & are more active than before the disaster. Of course, they may be anticipating the next onslaught! (I was going to write that I was keeping them on their toes, but that just would have been silly!)