July 10 - john has been off-line for almost a month while he bought a new computer and added new programs to it.

Since last month, john has continued to get over Shingles by taking acupuncture treatments. He now declares himself free of Shingles! In addition, he has stopped taking all medicines and has replaced them with herbs per his acupuncturist at The Wellness Connection in Lenexa Kansas. He was taking two different medicines for high blood pressure, three for Shingles, and one for stomach reflux. He now takes one herb for high blood pressure, one for general wellness and one for stomach. His blood pressure is now 120/80. He is cured from Shingles (though they can always return) and he has no reflux. Not too bad.

Now to more important things. In this last month, the ducklings have grown to nearly the size of their mother. They are now too big to go between the slats in the fence, so they are pretty much at zenpond until they can fly. Mom has begun to teach them to jet ski across the pond (a pre-cursor to flying). They go into all four levels of the big waterfall and soon will begin to jump off from the lower level and practice flying. Their wings are just a little small yet, but give them about two more weeks and john would expect them to begin flight school.

john is building the spa deck and will finish it using gray Trex. Trex is the new artificial wood product that doesn't warp or loose its color. It cannot give you splinters and is not slippery.

john has planted a new shade garden which has turned out rather well. It has hostas (of course), ferns and hydrangeas (Nikko Blue). The mulch is Rusty Red.

joyce and john continue to recover from the house remodeling project. They are organizing all the stuff they own. They are beginning to realize that "stuff owns them, not they own stuff". It that light more and more stuff is "getting gone"! The statement: "More is Less" is so true.

The tuckmeister sends his best ... or will soon when he gets up. He is sleeping in this afternoon. It is 3:25 pm and he is usually up at 3 pm. He had to put up with a major lightning storm last night, so may be a little more tired than usual.

July 14 - john was working on the spa deck this morning. Now it is too hot to be outside (in the upper 90's in Overland Park). It isn't as hot here as in parts of Colorado. Pueblo is 104 degrees today. joyce and john toured many ponds over the weekend. It was the annual Greater Kansas City Water Garden Society tour. There were a number of very nice ponds/waterfalls this year. One home had four ponds with streams running between them. They had it built over several years. john asked the contractor what it had cost to build. The answer was $25,000.

Right now the four "baby" ducks are floating in the big pond and looking in the computer room window at john. Mom sometimes flies away for a half hour for a break from the kids. The bullfrog is sitting on the deck sunning himself and waiting for lunch to fly by.

In Kansas City, almost everyone has gone to using red mulch in their gardens. john noticed that this is not the case in St. Louis when he and joyce visited relatives there a couple of weeks ago. john found a deeper red mulch at Home Depot called "Rustic Red". It really accents green plants more than the bright red mulch in most gardens.

john's scanner is still down. One of these days the pictures from zenpond will begin again.

July 17 - Pictures have returned sooner than john thought! john's neighbor loaned john his Olympus D4000 digital camera to try out. Here are some of the pictures john took of zencat & zenpond: