My Pond: December 2013

Lotus blossom

The lotus had one gorgeous blossom in the summer of 2013. Well worth the wait. Hopefully the plant will winter over as it is a cold hardy variety and we will get to see more blooms in 2014.

The Great Flood of Sept. 7, 2013

A huge downpour had far reaching consequences for our neighborhood with basements and garages flooding all through the area. The rainfall exceeded the pond capacity, and in this photo, the pond stretched clear to the back corner of the lot. Fortunately the fish had the sense to stay in the deepest part of the pond because I half expected to see fish swimming through my yard.

Hail Damage

Water hyacinth leaves damaged by the hail storm

Shredded Lettuce

The violent hail storm shredded all of the water lettuce and water hyacinth leaves. Had to throw most of them out after this photo was taken.

Water Lily

this cold hardy lily was divided in 2013 (rather poorly due to my laziness and the wrong sized container) but still managed to provide some beautiful blooms

Water Poppy

My friend Cindy gave me some water poppy plants and they have thrived over the summer. The fish don't seem interested in eating them. These should winter over and reappear next year.

The year of the floating plants

In 2012 I could barely get the floating plants to thrive, but in 2013 when we came back after being gone for a month, this is what greeted us! Complete and total and excessive success. What is the difference? Don't really know but I have two guesses. First, I used a floating island to protect the first few floaters (water lettuce and water hyacinth). Maybe having a safe haven allowed them to quickly propagate rather than having their roots chewed off the moment they started to multiply. Obviously, there are way more plants here than would fit in the island. Second, it is possible that the age of the pond has allowed the right amount of natural balance to provide enough fertilizer to offset the alkaline rocks that line our pond and affect our water.
Summer maintenance included weekly liquid fertilizer added to the pond and barley mixture added to the filter. The UV filter ran all summer and we never had a pea soup algae bloom. Had lots of other types of algae, but not the single cell problem of 2012.
It was a hot dry summer and I left most of the plant cover on the pond for August, even though the books say not to. Everything was thriving so well and the water looked so natural and clean that I wanted to keep it shaded with all the plants.

Koi

All the warnings in the pond books are correct: Do NOT add koi to small ponds! My koi, Spotty, just keeps growing, and here is seen coming out of the water to eat. Soon he will be knocking at the back door.

Tiger Eye Sumac

The summer of 2013 was a good one for the Tiger Eye Sumac (top center). It sprouted a baby off to the right, and my newer sumac (to the right of the white legged pot) was big enough to finally be noticeable. The ground cover, golden Creeping Jenny, was beautiful this year, but had to be pulled out of the waterfall because it would cause the pond level to drop by siphoning water the wrong direction.

horsetail

In 2013 the horsetail finally took off and grew really tall! Of course, I know this means that next year it will be invasive, but it is such a wonderful plant that I couldn't resist adding it to the edge of the pond. I did notice that some sections were growing up the hill out of the water, so that would be fine if it spreads that way.

Swallowing a Fish the Wrong Way

What happens when a snake tries to swallow a fish backwards? As you can see above, the fins stick out and prevent an easy swallow. I'm not sure what happened eventually, because watching a snake eat is really slllloooowwww, but I did discover on-line that fish will regurgitate food that doesn't go down, or when they have eaten a big meal and need to escape a predator quickly. Who knew?

My Pond