With a Little Help from My Niece

For about eleven years now I've had a large bed of trailing rosemary in the back garden by my pool. Its centerpiece has always been a small solar fountain. 

Denis and I loved the look and smell of the rosemary, and we enjoyed the solar fountain. There were only two problems. One was the grass that started growing in the rosemary and could not be eradicated. In fact, the blasted stuff began taking over the entire bed. Then there was the other problem.

Feral cats. When the economy tanked, lots of people in this area did a midnight flit, leaving their cats behind. After all, cats can take care of themselves, right? Our back garden is a sanctuary for birds. It also has several "watering holes." Guess where all the feral cats began congregating? That's right. In our back garden. I'd come home from work to find drifts of feathers blowing across the yard because the cats were killing as many birds as they possibly could. When they weren't being killing machines, they were breaking our solar fountains.

During the last two or three years, I got sick to death of pulling grass out of the rosemary, and I stopped having solar fountains that would just get broken. It simply wasn't worth it. Then... the feral cat problem finally began to get under control. So I began making plans. I was going to get another solar fountain. But first...

...the rosemary had to go, and that blasted grass had to go. In stages, I cleared that bed of the rosemary and most of the grass. I splashed out some extra money for a bigger solar fountain with an extra bell and whistle. I wanted to have everything done before our niece Daisy arrived from England, but I didn't.

Then it occurred to me to enlist Daisy's help, and being the type of person she is, she didn't hesitate,  helping me cut and root out the last of the grass, and to put down underlayment so the grass could no longer rear its ugly head. Denis came out to help us for a few minutes when it came to installing the fountain-- leveling it and getting it to run properly-- and then there was some rock for Daisy and I to put down.

After all her help it was a no-brainer for me when it came to naming the new solar fountain. Henceforth, it shall be known as Daisy's Fountain, and the hummingbirds absolutely love drinking from it (and sitting on the very top and cooling off their tiny feathered fannies)!