The beauty of leaking

I’m sure I’m culturally biased, but the aging process going on with the half-barrel here is beautiful. To a wine maker or a whiskey maker, the barrel would look terrible; their barrels are pristine oaken examples of cleanliness and perfection. When I made my three-half-barrel fountain, my intention was to have fish live in it. The water here has quite a lot of minerals in it (mostly calcium, I hope), and evaporation would make it more and more calcified and bad for fish. So I intentionally let the cracks weep water, and the split bamboo spouts that move water from barrel to barrel aren’t sealed tightly. In other words, the whole thing has lots of leaks. The levels are maintained by an external tank with a float valve that keeps everything full. Before marauding raccoons found them, the fish were thriving, so I guess that’s proof that leaky fountains work.