What is in the pool?

When we moved to Arizona I had only one request. I would not live in the heat without a swimming pool. I still live by that statement, I love having a pool. But you would be shocked at what ends up in the pool. We do have a cleaner that skimms the pool each day but you always have a few things that stick close to the top.

Ok, part of it is our own fault. We wanted privacy from our neighbors house so we planted Oleander trees around the South West corner of the pool. Oleander trees have wonderful white and pink flowers all summer long. Well, the flowers fall, of course, and end up floating in the pool. It looks sweet to see the open blooms floating on top of the water. But not so sweet when the same blooms get waterlogged and sink to the bottom. But then again, it is our own fault we planted the trees.

However, we also have 3 very large Fan palm trees in the south east corner of the yard. That is as far away from the pool as you can get and still be in our yard. This time of year the palm trees seed. The kids call the seeds fireworks because that is what they look like. They get spiky seed heads all around the palm fronds, then the seed heads burst into little tiny flowers. The flowers (seeds) fall in the breeze and end up in the pool. We have a net to clean the pool, but the little seeds are so small they just go through the net most of the time. It is like swimming with hundreds of little Knats floating it the water.

With the normal stuff that just happens to end up in the pool, these flowers and seed are becoming a real nuisance. Of course, it could be worse! We could have another suicidal bird floating in the pool. Luckily, this only happened once. The bird tried to land on the hose the cleans the pool to get a drink. 2 pound bird, small hose full of water????? Drowning bird...... Who knew birds couldn't swim!