The $40 Disappearing Fountain

Posted on October 3, 2009 by Meredith

For some time, we’d been wanting a little fountain in one of our front entryway beds, a sort of zen moment of trickling water as one approaches our front door. But getting a classic planter-style container with reservoir would have cost us more than $500, and it wasn’t really my style anyway. So I wanted to see how cheaply we could make a disappearing fountain using as many materials from home as we could. We could have probably made it for $21, but we decided to be “practical” and buy a couple of other items. It actually cost us less than $40 — I rounded up for the sake of the title. I’m not counting the cost of the electrical outlet, as we were going to be putting one out there anyway, not just for a fountain, and we already had a bunch of those parts anyway.

Money spent: We bought a large tub normally used for mixing cement ($11), as well as a small 130 gph pump (about $21). We also ran out of window screen, so I bought some more aluminum screen material ($7), but the rest will be used for plant containers, so I’m not really sure whether to add the cost in — regardless, that’s still less than $40. We seriously considered not using the basin and using other items we had at home, but in the end, we decided this might be best.

Materials gathered: An old grill from our neighbor’s uncle’s junk he was having hauled off, leftover block-style rocks from our other neighbor that we had used to circle a tree in the backyard, a concrete block, and little colorful rocks we found in the backyard.

At this point, I have to give out kudos to my 12-year-old son. This was more or less his pet project, and while I gave some guidance in regard to the plan (he had some rather far-fetched ideas and I had to bring him back to Earth a bit), he did the bulk of the work.

The first step was to dig out the plants from the area and give them new homes in the front yard (that really did a lot to make our front yard better, too). And then the hole for the basin was dug. The basin we chose turned out to be ideal for the job — the rock under the soil would have prevented the use of a deeper reservoir. (Please ignore the plastic edging in these photos — it came with the house, and at some point it will go away, because I can’t stand it.)

The concrete block is there to support the weight of the rocks on top of the grill, and we stuck some rocks underneath to let water flow. The ones we settled on are in the leveling picture below.

Dad helped with the leveling (and he also got to play electrician to put in the outdoor outlet).

We wrapped the window screen around the grill and cut a little hole for the pump tube.

Then we poured in some water collected from the recent rains (the change in rocks in the images had to do with some adjustments we made regarding the pump placement).

And the rest was just building the rock feature and collecting the little rocks for the base. Simple as that! Here’s a picture of the rock work in progress…

I love that it’s a little rock statue, and while I envisioned something like it, it came out even better than I imagined. Now I just need to choose some plants to go around it! I’ll probably end up spending more on those than I did on the fountain itself…

Thank you to my son for all his hard work and dedication to getting the job done, and thank you to my husband for the electrical work that I’m sure he’ll get finished soon (hint, hint).

Now, I should point out that disappearing fountains are technically a no-no during our city’s Stage 2 water restrictions. We’ll turn it back off when water is an issue again, but right now we have so much rainwater gathered that we actually have to find a place to put it all — the grounds are saturated and the bins are overflowing. This fountain is only going to be filled with rainwater from the roof or gray water, NOT hose water. And I think it looks wonderful whether water is flowing or not, so when it has to be turned off, it’s still going to make me happy. The water just gives that nice trickling sound, and I’m hoping we’ll see some wildlife visit on occasion, too.

The Ever-Growing List

Posted on August 17, 2009 by Meredith

Lookee, lookee! Something new is on my sidebar. It’s a list of all the plants in my garden. Click there, or click here, and take a look!

It’s a work in progress, and as I add new plants, so will I add to the list. But at long last, I finally got off my tush and, well, sat on my tush, and typed up the list of plants. I’ve only finished adding scientific names for the Texas-native plants, but I will catch up on the others. Any other errors are purely accidental!

Welcome and Unwelcome Visitors

Posted on August 11, 2009 by Meredith

Yesterday I had a very pleasant time visiting with Bob of Draco Gardens and his wonderful wife Lynn. They had me cracking up with so many hilarious stories, and they ~~forced on me~~ gave me some fantail goldfish for my pond. Well, to be honest, I was out there to get fish (they have a rather plentiful population at the moment), but somehow they managed to sneak more into the bucket… they claimed it was in case one of the fish died on the way home, haha. I told them that because I didn’t actually need more, that they’d all survive, grow, and make babies for me to bring back to Draco Gardens. Sure enough they all survived! More on that in a bit…

We spent a pleasant time chatting, and we got to talking about the Texas Star Hibiscus, a plant they love and one I just happen to have growing in my pond. I told them about the buds on my hibiscus that hadn’t bloomed yet, and Bob said I’d be posting a picture in my blog as soon as they did. Well, guess what I discovered today?

Look at that gorgeous red. The species is Hibiscus coccineus, and it’s also known as Scarlet Rose Mallow and Wild Red Mallow. It’s in the same family as the Texas Rock Rose (Rose Pavonia), and it’s native to Texas.

From a distance the leaves appear straggly to me, but close up they are quite striking. Elongated, toothed, and a beautiful combination of green and ruby… It’s interesting to note that when this plant was quite small, the lowest leaves were remarkably wide and looked almost as if they belonged to a different plant.

Googling for a bit about the plant, I laughed when I read that in 2004 a Houston narcotics task force raided a landscaper’s home and held him at gunpoint because they thought the Texas Star Hibiscus growing in the man’s front yard was marijuana. This earned them a Bum Steer Award from Texas Monthly magazine — for those of you not in Texas, Bum Steer Awards are given each year to the most idiotic or ridiculous people, actions, and events of the year in Texas and sometimes nationally. Not surprisingly, the list is long (and often includes politicians).

Back to the subject at hand — yes, this photo was taken at the wrong time of day, but I had to capture a picture of the tiny spider standing guard on the flower. Can you spot him?

Here he is:

The buds on my plant are all paired. I wonder if they always appear in pairs. Even the single bloom has a bud with it, as seen in the pictures above.

While photographing the stunning plant, I realized I was being watched by our newest amphibian resident. Being ever the romantic, it’s tempting to name him Prince, but I think instead I will call him Murray, after Bill Murray, who gets slimed by Slimer the ghost in “Ghostbusters.” Why not just call him Slimer, you ask? Because that would be too obvious, of course.

I tried hard to capture a picture of the new fish, but they scooted under foliage anytime they noticed me looming above. I enjoyed watching all the fish school around together. The new fish are quite at home. We’re now up to nine fish, egads! This isn’t a great picture, but you can see one of the wee ones swimming with the “big” fish.

I am so jealous of the gorgeous dragonfly and damselfly pictures that many other garden bloggers get. Without a good zoom lens, I can’t close enough to take a picture without the little guys flying away, if they even land near me. And yet I am happy to have as many as will come eat my mosquitoes and wasps and even some of the plentiful tadpoles. I definitely have noticed a decrease in mosquitoes since having the pond, though perhaps that has more to do with the drought, lol. Maybe bats are visiting my pond at night now. One could hope! Do bats eat wasps and hornets?

Just behind it was this caterpillar-eating menace. Can’t it just eat webworms instead of my future butterflies?

And in my garden, I found this horrifying creature, the terrifying, shriek-causing, hide-all-your-plants-from Gigantic Grasshopper — one of those that are so big they don’t bother to jump at all — they just fly their clumsy fly way out of reach. I knew I was making a mistake taking a picture of it when I should have just killed it — it got away, flying to the branches of an oak tree. Which really bugged me! (pun intended)

I guess that makes mine a garden of good and evil!

Toadally Frogsome Rescues, Dude

Posted on August 3, 2009 by Meredith

Today’s post was supposed to be about my happy veggie gardens, but wildlife had other plans for me. Like our newest pond resident…

I found him peeking out at me from the dog pool. An actual frog for a change — not a toad this time! It turns out that frogs are much harder to catch than toads. He darted under the water and far away each time we came too close for his comfort. We had to lower the water level by taking the dirty water from the dog pool (we give it to our plants; it was extra high from the rain a few days ago). And then we had to be extra sneaky with a big glass bowl, which we ended up bringing up under the frog. Once he was in there, he was quite willing to pose for some pictures. Or just stay like a statue lest we eat might decide to eat him.

I decided to let him move into the pond. He was too cute to resist. Here he is on a pond rock, just before diving in. I’m not up on my amphibian species yet — is he some species of leopard frog?

But the next day I made a different decision. I went to clean the rest of the water out of the dog pond and discovered, to my horror, that the toad eggs laid by the amorous toads of three days ago had already hatched and become tadpoles. Countless tadpoles. They were swimming like mad around the remaining water in the dog pool. Well, this called for a rescue. But they were not going into MY pond, by gosh. I decided to drive them to a nearby big pond.

First we had to get them out of the dog pool. We started by getting as much water as we could safely get from the pool and carting it around to area plants. Then we finally realized that it would be much faster to just pour water through a net into buckets and separate the tadpoles into their own bucket of water. The water got particularly filthy as the water level went down. The dogs tracked in a lot of mud after our rain the other day.

As we got closer to the bottom, we found even more tadpoles — “baby” ones, haha. By the time we got all the tadpoles out, the count was in the thousands. I’m so glad we didn’t attempt to put any in our pond. There’s enough in there already! Bucket filled, let’s go!

Seatbelts on, children!

We drove over to the pond and added a little water from the big pond into the bucket to make the transition easier on the tadpoles. Then we poured them into the shallow water at the pond edge (first shooing away the minnows and other little fish that seemed to think we were there to feed them or something).

We made sure the tadpoles were swimming (not that we could have given them CPR or anything). They looked happy enough, and so were we.

So we celebrated with boba drinks. I worried that the pearls (tapioca balls) would remind me of toad eggs, and so they did. My choosing a green drink was totally (toadally) an accident, though!

See the resemblance?

We had one more good deed of the day — helping jump-start someone’s car in the parking lot. Then it was time to head back home. And the dogs are happy to have a nice clean pool that they can muddy up again.

Creature from the Black Lagoon

Posted on July 31, 2009 by Meredith

At long-last, my neighborhood got some long-needed rain. I say my neighborhood because in all honesty and selfishness, I have no idea what happened elsewhere in Austin. I was too busy out in the rain doing a little happy dance. I guess the gardening gods felt sorry for me and let the rain fall. I shall pay proper homage later.

And it was a good long rain. Long enough to give a deep watering to the trees, gardens, and scorched earth. Long enough to fill my mock rain barrels and get the toads ready for l’amour. See this massive spout of water? We’re in the process of painting and have no gutters up, so no rain barrels, but I put out two plastic bins to catch as much water as I could. They overflowed, so much water fell. Yay!

Even the entryway’s crazy-tall Japanese Yew, planted 20+ years ago by some previous owner, got some water. You can’t see much of it from this picture, because I was taking pictures of the rain!

Hey, I just now read that the Yew is quite toxic. Why am I not surprised? It seems everything I want to plant or is already here is toxic (except the key lime tree I bought today. Wheee! Oops, hubbie, ignore that. But if you don’t ignore it, blame the wee one; he insisted on getting it. It was only $20 and quite large! Key limes, honey, key limes! Just think of the money we’ll SAVE!).

So what does rain have to do with this odd title, “Creature from the Black Lagoon”? Well, I’ll tell you. It all started when I woke up at 6-something this morning and let the dogs outside. When I tried to get them to come back inside, the puppy was standing in the dog pond (a.k.a. wading pool) and not moving.

Grover wasn’t moving because, as it turns out, he was surrounded by several toads in the water. They weren’t very happy with him in there, and I guess he didn’t quite know what to do, either. I didn’t get a picture, as I decided to rescue the toads and move them toward the main pond. Here’s a picture of Grover later, with a stick he’d found.

But Grover is not the Creature from the Black Lagoon. And it turns out that two of the many toads were actually double — mating toads foolishly thinking that the dog pond was a good place to hook up. Even as I rescued the toads and helped them find their way to the crevices of the main pond rocks, those silly boy toads kept a tight grip, making the females lug them around. I could hear the toads croaking last night and this morning — I guess rain brings out toad passion. Water’s here — let’s get together, baby!

While I was outside, I realized that the waterfall in the pond had become a trickle, which meant that the pump was clogged with something. So I decided to go ahead and deal with the pond right away. The rain might have sent some tree debris into the pond. While I got ready, I grabbed the camera and caught a picture of a toad on a pond rock. All those toads aren’t Creatures from the Black Lagoon either.

If it wasn’t rain debris clogging the pump, there was a chance it was something messed up from the last time Sheba got in the pond. I’m still trying to get a good picture of this pretty dog, but she truly tries to hide from my camera. I have to be sneaky.

She might be camera-shy, but she’s not the Creature from the Black Lagoon either.

So I get in the pond and begin my work. Sure enough, the filter was slightly tilted, letting debris get in. And there was an umbrella plant that had been knocked to the bottom of pond. Amazingly it was fine and had new growth. Is it the creature? No. Nor are the snails I found (the dwarf puffer in my aquarium will be most appreciative when I feed those to him!).

Since getting in and out of the pond is an annoying chore, I decided to make the most of my time in there. I threw out any leaves and sticks I found, got sludge that had collected below the pump, trimmed the dwarf papyrus, and gathered pea gravel that had fallen out of knocked-down plants and put it back in the respective pots. While I was working, two pairs of mating toads hopped up the pond rocks and joined me in the pond. I guess mating takes priority over being scared of the human. And amazingly I didn’t drop the camera in the pond during these pictures.

The mating toads aren’t Creatures from the Black Lagoon. Nor are these toad eggs I found while working on the plants in the pond. Pretty cool — I hadn’t seen eggs before. Suddenly I realize how many eggs are probably in my pond. Hopefully it won’t affect the fish, or vice-versa! The fish aren’t the Creatures either. But they gave me little goldfish “kisses” in the pond while I worked. Hey, I can pretend they were kisses!

I continued working, even sitting down in the water to collect some hair algae that was growing in various places in the pond. It had become a problem after the last major time Sheba got in the pond, when she knocked half the plants into the depths of the pond. Lots of spilled soil and whatnot had been added to the pond, and the hair algae went wild. We added a barley block and more submerged grasses, and the pond is back on track. The hair algae? Not the Creature. But you’re getting closer.

I found lots of nasty sludge in the filter pot. I scooped much of it out with my hands and tossed it into the nearby garden bed. Some sludge is ok, but not in my filter pot. I opted not to take a picture with my nice camera while having sludge in my hand. Sludge? Not the Creature.

You can see in the second mating toad pic the dwarf papyrus I trimmed back. It’s trying to bust out of its pot now, but today wasn’t the day for me to deal with it. So I trimmed back the parts that were drooping into the water. There were a lot. The monster “dwarf” papyrus, before or after its haircut, isn’t the Creature.

Here’s the cleaned-up pond.

Hmmm, after looking at this picture, the dwarf papyrus still looks like it needs a haircut. Reminds me of my husband on our wedding day, when his hair looked exactly the same after having paid for a haircut… you know, before wedding pictures… sigh.

So the “dwarf” papyrus isn’t the creature, nor is the baby dwarf lily I decided to lower slightly into the water to let it grow taller. Not the Pink Sparkle flower, either.

I decided while I was out there to go ahead and plant the swamp milkweed I’d grown from seed, not realizing that Asclepias incarnata was actually swamp milkweed (It didn’t say it on the package! Not my fault…). As the name implies, it likes water, and I had a dilemma of figuring out where to put it, as I really didn’t want to plant something that wasn’t drought-hardy. I finally figured out that if I plant it next to the dog pond, their splashing was likely to give the plants the extra water they’d need. I already cart the dirty dog water to my plants all over the the backyard, before refilling the wading pool. It’s a pain, but I do it. Can’t waste the water and can’t leave it in long enough for mosquitoes.

Aha, Swamp Milkweed, you say — with “swamp” in the name, the milkweed has to be the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Nope, wrong again.

It’s not this bug I found on the buds of my Texas star hibiscus, which apparently likes its spot in the pond. I can’t wait to see the flowers!

It’s not any of the dragonflies that were flitting about the yard and the dog pond. I couldn’t get a good picture, they zoomed so fast; but I think they were Roseate Skimmers. The male was a gorgeous pink/fuscia. The females (if they were the same species) were brown/orange/black.

Ok, then what in the world was the Creature from the Black Lagoon in this story? ME, it was me. Picture if you will a woman wearing an old t-shirt and some old, too-short shorts (It was still just before dawn when I got in that pond! Who’d be watching?), who gets in a pond to do some maintenance. After sitting in the depths to gather sludge, hair algae, debris, gravel, and whatnot, I was rather a solid wet, gross mess from head to toe, and having the waterfall turned back on while I was in there guaranteed that more silt was churned up to collect on my clothes. Oh, but the story doesn’t stop there…

When I got out of the pond, I figured that since I was already filthy, I might as well plant the swamp milkweed in the wet soil nearby, as you know. What’s a little more mud? Nothing, until I went to the backdoor to go back into the house to take a shower. It was LOCKED. Locked by my husband, who so generously let me stay working in the pond by taking the boys to camp for me. Locked, perhaps out of habit, just before he left the house. And there I stood, now about 8:30 in the morning, looking like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. And then the realization that I was probably doomed to walk through the neighborhood looking like that to find someone to let me either call my husband or help me get into my house.

Fortunately, a spark of brilliance came to me (thank you again, gardening gods… or house gods) and I was able to get inside the house without having to show up on a neighbor’s doorstep, ring the doorbell, and <shudder>. If I hadn’t found a way inside, this story might be called “The Black Widow” instead of the “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” if you get my drift.

And no, I did NOT take a picture.

Ibis Blooms and Pond Fish to Avoid

Posted on July 2, 2009 by Meredith

Here’s a lovely tree I bet everyone will want to have. Just look at the size of these beautiful red blooms!

Allright, allright, they are scarlet ibis nesting in a tree in the San Antonio Zoo. Yesterday I herded my own little pack of wild animals among exotic plants and creatures from all over the world. I had great intentions to go from the zoo over to the San Antonio Botanical Gardens, but somehow the day slipped by and we were still at the zoo. By the time I realized that I wasn’t going to make it over to the gardens, I’d wished I’d taken more pictures of the beautiful plants that graced the zoo. Still, I did manage to get a few.

Like this banana plant. I hope they treat the apes and monkeys to these yummy treats when they are ripe enough!

This bamboo was gigantic enough to unfortunately invite some graffiti from zoo visitors. While I hate to see such careless destruction on the part of passersby, I found the bamboo an interesting setting for urban art and lettering.

I did find that the zoo was pretty good about labeling the various Texas native plants around the park, but the exotics weren’t so well labeled, at least not the ones I was particularly interested in, of course. Oh, I really liked this plant, whatever its name might be.

This is a very vibrant shrimp plant — I’m not sure of the variety. My young (and red) shrimp plants still aren’t blooming. I hope that they’ll be busy bloomers in their second year, if not this year.

The lion’s tail, also called lion’s mane, is very striking. This was the first time I’d seen one in person.

The zoo has opened a butterfly center, which was delightful. Many different species of butterflies fluttered all around us, enjoying nectar and orange slices. The monarchs were quite willing to pose.

It was a zoo trip, so I can’t resist throwing in a couple of other animal pictures. Apparently I developed a rapport with some of the park residents. Like this komodo.

Lorikeets are great pollinators in their native region.

I really don’t know why the piranha kept looking at me like this. It was quite… unnerving. I can definitely say that I’m glad they aren’t in my pond!

On a similar note, back on the home front, I’m also glad that I chose NOT to put a killifish in my pond. I came home to discover that the killifish we had is the culprit behind my disappearing fish in my indoor aquarium — I found this out because it had my last neon tetra sticking out of his mouth (after it apparently devoured all the rest). Needless to say, he’s off to a new home with bigger bullies than he is, and the rest of my fish can be at peace. I had planned to add a local variety of killifish to my pond. HA! No more. I didn’t bother to take a picture of the killifish before I grabbed that net and got him out of there! Sorry! Look it up — and then don’t buy one!

On the plus side, we did get a bit of rain here in Austin. I did a little happy dance.

And I found a surprise little bloom in my pond. I really need to learn the name of this plant sometime. Now that it’s blooming, it doesn’t look like the plant(s) I thought it might be. Ah well, the bloom will be the identifier when I next visit the pond center. It’s a Pickerel Weed — thanks, Bob!

Bird Socks and a Garden Mom’s Pride

Posted on June 16, 2009 by Meredith

Put me in nature, and I’m happy. That’s how I’ve been all my life, and though my moods might change, the nature lover in me never will. I’m an animal lover, too, and if any of these two parts of me rub off on my family, then I feel I’ve done right by them. Goodness knows enough bad parts of me have probably been shared with them already!

It has often been difficult, however, to pry my husband and children away from computers and other monitors. Oh, I insist on sports and cycling and hiking with the dogs, but it’s not hard to figure out what they’d prefer if given the choice. That’s pretty much why I don’t ever give them a choice when it comes to my planning for us to be outside, be it for enjoyment or working in the yard. Sometimes I get a grumpy, groaned response when I announce it’s time to take the dogs to the creek, but a good mom knows when to ignore this or put her foot down. The hardest part is getting the family out of the door – once you get them away from the house, they have a good time, unless you accidentally forget to tell them that they’re not allowed to bring their Nintendos in the car. It’s all over if a nearby game beckons them.

My kids have been involved in our new garden since I began it in the fall. Amazingly, they’ve been fairly willing to help at least a few minutes each day, and they delight as I do when birds and dragonflies and butterflies and other creatures come visit our blooming flowers and pond. But last weekend the effect I’ve had on my kids became truly apparent. My oldest son had friends come over for a birthday party, and when they arrived, he didn’t pull out the video games or Nerf guns. He took them outside to see our pond, and when they finished looking at that, he and his brother showed them the butterfly garden and thistle socks and birdfeeders. I didn’t get to hear the conversation, but I watched through the window as they pointed to different places in our yard and played tour guide. My heart swelled, and I’m still smiling.

And I also get to smile about our thistle sock experiment. We have a winner! The finches have found the thistle socks, and the clear favorite is the kitchen lace, which I kind of hoped for because it looks the prettiest in the tree. I guess I’m a girl after all – sometimes I forget that in a house of boys. Surprisingly, the next choice of the finches, based on missing thistle, is the jersey sock. The green netting has some holes poke into it, but it doesn’t look like they’ve touched the brand sock or the pantyhose (though there is a run in the pantyhose, so one must have landed on it). I’m also glad the finches chose the kitchen lace sock, because it’s the one my youngest son stitched by hand, his first attempt at sewing anything with a needle.

So I think I’ll make a few more lace socks, and then rotate them as I refill thistle. The lace socks aren’t exceptionally durable, however – the finches are a little rough in their endeavor to get to the thistle, but I can make a bunch for cheap, and I think they’ll last a pretty long time anyway.

The activity at the other feeders is busy nonstop. The hummingbirds are starting to fight over their feeder (and I’ve gotten to see them visit the flame acanthus and salvia). And it’s a nonstop parade of creatures at the other feeder. Cardinals, finches, blue jays, doves, squirrels, and titmice all for the most part are playing nice and taking turns (well, not so much the blue jays — they are the classic bullies). But we’re entertained, and so are the cats and dogs inside.

This Day Is for the Birds

Posted on June 10, 2009 by Meredith

I’m not sure whether this is the right time of year to be putting out thistle for finches, but I’ve been seeing them around, so I thought I might as well. I’ve been interested in trying thistle socks, but gasped when I saw how much our local bird shop was selling them for. No way could something like that cost $7 — online I found them for around $3. But why not make them myself? I headed to the fabric store and found that they don’t carry the typical fabric used for the socks, so I decided to do an experiment and chose 4 materials to see which the finches preferred — jersey, a lacy curtain material, and two kinds of netting. I spent a total of $3.05 and still have extra material to make more — I also got a sock free with my thistle purchase, and I pulled out an old bit of pantyhose to make a grand total of 6 thistle socks to delight the birdies.

I should point out that I’m currently without a sewing machine — we handstitched the four bags we made. If we have a winner, I’ll likely be borrowing a friend’s sewing machine, and then I’ll make more (here’s yet another reason why I want a new sewing machine, hubbie!).

I hope the birds prefer the jersey, pantyhose, or lacy stuff — they were the easiest to work with. The larger netting was a failure off the bat — the thistle fell right through the holes (I should have tested it before I bothered stitching the sock). Surprisingly, a lot of thistle fell out of the store-brand sock, too. What a waste of seed — I hope the other socks work ok so that I don’t have to watch so much thistle fall to the ground. The pantyhose was the easiest of all — I just had to pour the thistle and tie a knot — but the result had, pardon me, a rather phallic appearance until I smushed the seed down into a nice ball shape. The advantage to the smaller netting is that it comes in a variety of colors — it would make a colorful display in the trees. I didn’t poke any holes in the fat little thistle ball of pantyhose, but I might do that if the finches ignore it completely.

Now all I need are finches!

I certainly didn’t want to ignore the other birds in our neighborhood. I put out our new hummingbird feeder by the butterfly garden,

and got the yellow jackets out of our old seed birdfeeder, cleaning it and drying it for new seed. Hopefully the cardinals will find it again before the doves do. I bet if I set out the little sprinkler near it they will — a cardinal couple took a bath when I watered the side yard today. Looking out the window, there’s already a squirrel trying to figure out how to get some free munchies.

So where are the birds in my bird post? Well, they decided to hide when the camera came out, but I managed to sneak a pic of this female cardinal, chirping with her mate.

In other garden news, we already have tadpoles — we’ve had water in the pond for what, a week and a half? Seems rather fast — I wonder if there were toad/frog eggs in some of the plants we bought. Oh, I hope it’s just our neighborhood toads and not some crazy frogs from the pond store. Although there’s only one tadpole in this picture (it was hard to get a decent photo) — there are a ridiculous number swimming around happily in the pond. Some are larger than others — they just can’t all be from our toads. Sigh.

And the bottle discovery from the front yard soil is apparently a Coca-Cola bottle from around 1957 — for now I sealed a message in it with a cork and put it by the front door.

Dog disasters, algae, hummer, and (no longer a) mystery plant

Posted on June 8, 2009 by Meredith

So it finally happened. One of the dogs jumped into the raised pond yesterday and knocked over several soil-and-pea-gravel-filled pots of water plants. Add tearing into two mulch bags to that (and while we were outside dealing with that dog, the husky inside the house got my husband’s dinner off the table). We were not happy campers. I had just taken a shower and was in nice clean clothes, then I found myself standing hip-high in the pond trying to collect gravel from the bottom with my toes and a hoe, and saving surface-preferring bog plants from the depths of our hot-tub pond. Eventually I gave up and just reached down and used my hands to get the pea gravel, drenching me pretty much from head to toe in pond water.

I suppose that looking on the positive side of things, I got to do a little check on the placement of plants in the pond, as well as remove any dead leaves from the plants that would otherwise have been difficult to reach. And it will force me to finally get those last two bags of mulch off the grass (what remains, anyway) and into the garden beds where they belong. I guess the only thing positive I can say about the dinner incident is that perhaps my husband didn’t need those pizza calories anyway… I’m pretty certain there’s nothing positive my husband would say about that one, though!

I do have to say that either the additional plants I got in the middle of the algae bloom or just the natural process of pond establishment has put the clarity of the water back on track. I can see the goldfish again, and they are happy. Here is one next to a lily bloom, the Perry’s Baby Red. I worry that the pond is looking a little crowded with plants, and yet I’m determined to get a horsetail reed in there as a native plant.

Today I saw my first visiting hummingbird! It was as startled as I was to see it, and it zoomed off before letting me take its picture. But I’m ecstatic and can’t wait to see more.

And finally, I figured out the mystery plant in my garden. I’d planted three of them there in the early spring and forgot about them — in fact, I hardly watered them, but they are thriving. They are Fall Asters. I read today that I should prune them some this month to make them more bushy and covered in fall blooms. Hmmmm….

The algae… it’s a-bloomin’

Posted on June 5, 2009 by Meredith

I know that part of the natural process of establishing a healthy pond is going through an initial algae bloom, but all the same it’s a bit of a shock to see it.

I hope that it’s not going to get worse before it gets better. I rushed right out today to get more aquatic plants to hog the nutrients in the water. The local pond nurseries are going through a shortage of the submerged plant called Hornwort, but Emerald Gardens had some healthy new anacharis, so I headed right down. It was my first time to the store, and I’m glad to report that they have a good selection of pond plants to choose from. I didn’t get too many pictures at the store (I have kids, and it was hot), but I enjoyed walking through.

They, of course, have a variety of both native and non-native plants. I saw quite a few beautiful plants that I have a suspicion would not be found in a xeriscaped garden. The main attractions, though, were the ponds, and they were plentiful and very lovely. Did I get pictures? Nope. Next visit!

There was a very cool and very tall plant — it wasn’t labeled, but check out this stem:

I picked up some anacharis, a small maidenhair fern, and this dwarf papyrus. It was big, healthy, and hard to resist.

On the way home (read: detour), I stopped by Natural Gardener to see if they had some horsetail reed (Equisetum hyemale) (they had some at Emerald Gardens, but I was looking for an excuse to go to NG). I should have gotten some at Emerald Gardens, because NG currently only had the giant horsetail in the 1-gallon size I was looking for. But I did buy a Texas Star Hibiscus (Hibiscus coccineus) for the pond. I love how the leaves change in appearance as they mature.

I also went a little crazy and bought several other 4-inch plants to fill up the gaps in my butterfly/hummingbird garden. I usually try so hard to go mostly native, but I ended up gleefully giving in to an assortment of drought-tolerant plants — some native, some not — that I’ve always wanted but hadn’t ever bought, or perhaps didn’t buy enough of: gayfeather, bat-face cuphea (ok, turns out that one perhaps needs more water than it’s likely to get), cigar plant, white gaura, pink gaura, rock rose, and some extra milkweed. I accidentally bought some bee balm — which seems to require moisture, so it might get put over by the air conditioner, pond, or in a container. And I bought a small dwarf bottlebrush (from Emerald Gardens) to go in the container left empty after the dogs ate the dwarf pomegranate.

I am determined to have a healthy garden for monarchs, queens, and other butterflies. My current plants were just not doing as well as I’d like, though — the aphids took their toll this year. I went too long without removing those nasty pests, and the ladybugs had poor timing. I hesitate to show these pictures of my suffering milkweeds after Fairegarden showed such gorgeous pictures yesterday of Butterfly weed, Asclepias tuberosa, complete with butterflies. But she inspired me to go inspect my related plants, Asclepias curassavica, and ugh, they seemed so stunted because of the aphids. Hose came out, I washed the aphids off, at least until I found a ladybug feasting–those aphids stayed. And so I bought a couple of healthy ones from Natural Gardener to add in, just cause.

I’ll finish with a lovely rock rose (Pavonia lasiopetala) that already looks perfect next to the limestone rocks of the pond, and it’s not even in the ground yet!