Pond News

Mrs Vache Folle bought me some new orange comets to replace the ones that were eaten by the heron a few weeks ago. I had forgotten how tiny they are when you buy them at the pet store. They joined the population of non-orange comets which were born in the pond and make them all easier to see by their presence in the schools. The lilies are big enough now to shelter them from airborne predation, and next spring I aim to put in some floating cover to make up for the absence of the lily pads.

May was so dry that the streams quit running, so I suspended sludge removal operations and raised the water level by repairing the weir. I had split some of the lilies and spread them out, and these are all thriving and fixing to bloom. Water hyacinths have been hard to come by, but the five specimens I was able to find have doubled in size over the last couple of weeks. The pickerel weeds that got buried in sand look as if they are trying to spring back to life. If Jasper would quit stepping on them when he chases frogs that would be a big help.

We have trained Jasper to hunt frogs only in the shallow end of the pond and to avoid the deep end on the other side of the central berm. That keeps the lilies intact and keeps Jasper from most encounters with Brad and the other water snakes. Most of the wildlife prefers the deep side, so I find the vast majority of tadpoles, salamanders and fish in that area. I stumbled on a crayfish walking across the front yard on Saturday, so I introduced him to the pond. The previous representative of the crustaceans, Lefty the crawdad, had died in early May, perhaps a victim of my aggressive sludge removal campaign. We had turtles a couple of years ago, but they never came back. Jasper probably makes the pond rater uninviting for them. He won’t let ducks hang around, either.

I put the pond sludge along the creek bank to raise it and the yard extending out from it for about 15 feet a foot or so. Mrs Vache Folle tossed some grass seed on it and neglected it. Naturally, it is now quite grassy. Since I suspended the sludge removal, the project of raising this low spot is incomplete, but I hope to finish it in October.

I bolstered the sides of the pond on either side of the weir with more liner and big rocks, so I am hoping that fall and spring stormwater will be contained and channeled into the weir instead of running over the pondside perennial beds. We’ll see if it works.