The Fish

This was taken in early summer.  By the fall of 2012, the koi were tripled in size, and the little gray goldfish were much bigger and turning all sorts of colors.  We enter the winter season with way too many fish again.....these as well as some new ones that appeared in August.

Cricket

This must have been early summer as the red stemmed thalia is very small.  Cricket and Tucker love drinking from the pond, but during the summer Cricket discovered that there were fish in there and we had to restrict him from the area for a while to keep him from climbing in at every opportunity.  We hoped he would lose interest, which he did.

Mid Summer

The summer of 2012 was very hot and dry.  Most pond plants did well.  I used more plant fertilizer this year.  The water hyacinths that look so healthy in this picture didn't last long.  Someone eats their roots and they don't thrive.  The water lettuce did better.  We had to buy a UV clarifier because of algae bloom.  It took a couple of weeks, but the result was great.  No chemicals needed to keep nice clear water.  We bought the clarifier from Lowes because we were in a hurry.  This summer has seen a build-up of string algae in the waterfall portion (not in the pond itself).  The grandkids loved to help pull it out, which made things easier.

Red stemmed thalia

The focal point of the pond this year was the red stemmed thalia.  I ordered it on-line and it has done beautifully this summer.  Here you can see the odd slender blooms that appeared above the plant at the end of the summer.  As it is a tropical plant, I will have to get a new one next year.  I couldn't figure out how to overwinter it inside due to the size of the plant.

Variegated Cattail

Plants a'blooming!

The Reed Grass (Calamagrostis acutiflora) is blooming, and you can see the brown balls of the miniature cattail through the large cattail leaves.  The large cattail has green cattails which clued me in this year that the plant was not sweet flag as I had thought but was instead a slow growing variegated cattail.  It looks great and as it is supposed to be slow growing, will hopefully stay controllable.

New Dragonfly

Newly emerging dragonfly.  He will soon darken in color and have bold black and white stripes on his wings.