Spring has sprung!
“The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something for the good of the world.”
– Charles Dudley Warner
If this is true about a garden, then a pond must be something good for the universe. Indeed, this is what spring is to me. Something good is on the way. Life is busting out from the ground, the seeds, the dirt, the birds, the air, the sun. The dead of winter is being overcome by life.
This past spring 23′ was one that had been planned for. The testin’ of the fall was also a time of preparation, with spring in mind. I had tucked away, under the dirt, all around the edges of the pond, little bursts of life and color. The daffodils, crocus and iris were quietly waiting for their moment to jump out and welcome the change of seasons.
Take a look at the album for this step of the pond process. The lifeless water is being upstaged by the outside of the pond. Color is erupting, life is underway and soon life will be spilling into the water. Cattails, reeds and all variety of winter hardy plants are needed to support life and to develop the ecosystem towards its next stage of life.
View the album: springin’ it
Every year is a new adventure!
I look forward to trying new things in our yard. There isn’t time to go into all the fantastic adventures of gardening right now. The pond is just one aspect of our yard and I love to experiment in it just like the garden. The pond, besides being a spot of beauty, has a function to carry out for the yard. That function is most astonishing in the spring.
Water draws in life. Water welcomes birds. Big one, little ones. Black, red, yellow, speckled and spotted ones. Every variety of bird arrives in spring. The pond brings all of them to our back window. The new season of cat TV begins every year around April.
We will inevitably hear cat chatter at the back window. Kiwi and Peaches, our Tuxedo and tortoiseshell cats both are entertained by all the birds flocking to the pond. If that was the ponds only function it would be worth it, but this is merely a fringe benefit. The true function of the pond is the variety of life that water sustains.
Bugs and critters, birds and bees, all of these play their part in the cycle of life we see take place in the spring time pond. Coming out of winter in 23′ a new water feature emerges. The pump that fuels the waterfalls is going to bring baths to the birds. Liquid life will begin to course through the veins of the pond and along with it life in all varieties.
Life seems to be coming from all directions. From the outside in, form the inside out, from the bottom up and from the top down. There is not a square inch that is not going to change in the months of spring into summer.
This spring of 23′ was possible because of the work of anticipation put into place in Oct/Nov of 22′. God designed life to spring out of death. The dead of winter holds the seed in its grip for only so long and as soon as the rays of sun begin to warm the soil, life blossoms. BIG.
The pond plant effort began with a trip to the local bog. You can probably get cat tails from amazon but what is the fun in that. We needed to go get our own cattails the old fashion way. We needed to earn it with muddy shoes.
The local bog was not far away and having done this before I knew we didn’t need that much to start with. A few roots would be enough but instead I will gather enough for twelve ponds. I came back with a 5 gallon bucket full of pond cleaning magic. That is what cat tails are for your pond. They are the liver of the pond. They clean your water better than any other of God’s creatures.
I knew how well cat tails did from my toady mess pond. I had cat tails – boy did I. On at least three occasions I literally and ruthlessly yanked every bit of the visible cat tails out of the pond and burned them in a pile. The next year, cattails arrived.
Cat tails are prolific. Like brill creme – a little dab will do ya. I didn’t need a 5 gallon bucket of them. With patience and time, I will be overran with cat tails once again. It’s a good thing because they do a really good job cleaning the water. They also draw in dragonflies, birds, bugs and all sorts of life below the surface. The fish will live around the roots because the roots sustain the life that thrives around them.
I had clean water to begin with because until the summer I didn’t have a single fish. That would change in a few months as I added more life to the burgeoning life around the pond. Adding fish would also introduce imbalance to the water. Imbalance: typical state of my pond. Too many nutrients, not enough nutrients and back to too many.
Algae thrives on sun and nutrients; algae comes but algae doesn’t go away, at least not by itself. My hope and plan is to achieve a better balance this year with more plants, better plants, bigger plants to gobble up the excess nutrients. I will probably chase this balance all year and even if I grab on to it, I will doubtlessly loose grasp at some point.
I look forward to spring for so many reasons but this year one of them is to take the next steps of pond maturing. More lights, more plants, more enjoyment of the life it sustains. Spring is still a few months away but I am already dreaming about what next.
I hope you come back for the final chapter of my pond saga where I wrap it up with fishin’ it. I will talk about our adventure with fish. Little fish, bigger fish and disappearing fish. Pond life is never dull.
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