All in a day's work!

I am not keen on doing too much housework now it is getting hotter, though I do keep the house clean and the washing is done regularly, but I was pleased when Chris took on the work of looking after the swimming pool. The water ph level has to be tested regularly, and more often once it has more 'bodies' in it, and the chemicals must be added and adjusted accordingly. Also the pump is turned on twice a day (it's on a time switch) to keep the water, and the chlorine, circulating. But of course, it also has to be kept clean so that it is inviting to get into. There are not too many trees around but we still get leaves in the water most days, and there is a big net for fishing these out. Then there is a very long handled broom to sweep any debris on the bottom, towards the outlets. However, we have had some very high winds lately and we realised that the pool had a layer of fine sand in it which was just disturbed by the broom, and settled again, rather than being sucked out by the pump. So today we went 'gadget hunting'. It took a while to locate a swimming-pool supplies merchant, and when we did, they didn't have what we wanted. We then stopped off at a supermarket for bread and milk and we met a couple from my church who were able to direct us to another shop. This one had closed for lunch by the time we got to it, but Chris went back after siesta time, and he bought 12 metres of hose some connectors and a very long pole. These connected up to a cleaner-head we found in the shed and we now have a pool 'hoover'. The other end of the hose fits onto the pump so it sucks up the sand into the waste water pipe. We discovered that you have to do this fairly fast or it sucks out too much water. Our water is on a meter so we try not to top the pool up too often, but the water level has to be above the inlet/outlet holes, or it will ruin the pump. So now Chris can hoover outside while I hoover inside, and we'll both have everything spic-and-span!

I took another photo of the white strelitzia to show you. It has got several layers of flowers on it now. It's not the most beautiful flower I have ever seen, in fact I think I prefer the orange one, but it is very interesting all the same. I read today that it doesn't like the full mid-day sun which is exactly what ours gets, but it doesn't seem to mind too much. It also said to spray it daily when the sun is not directly on it so I might start doing that tomorrow. We are really please to se that the plant I think is stephanotis, that we cut half the roots off last month and repotted, is now sending out lots of new shoots. So we didn't kill it! I have also found three tiny lemons on our little tree that looked so sad when we moved in. I am misting them twice a day to encourage them not to drop off. I'd be really chuffed to get some fruit on it.