The water garden and moss garden

It was a fine day to be out gardening.  I watered a bit in the morning.  After lunch I was out for about 3 hours.  I did weeding and a bit of pruning.  There are lots of little Saskatoon berries, there are little yellow plums, there are tiny apples, and the strawberries are still blooming and forming berries. 

This is a look at the dry stream that goes from next to the pond to under the deck, into heavy shade.  At the bottom of the photo is the little lace leaf maple and next to it is the lantern.  I am happy to see it is beginning to grow some moss and get a nice patina.  Across from the lantern is my best moss that is under the mountain laurel that is just coming into bloom. On the left there is a little cedar by the lantern and you see one bloom of the rhodo that is just over from the lantern.  At the curve in the dry stream there is a old stump and on the other side just before the curve is a large fern.  At the stump the dry stream curves and runs under the outer edge of the deck.

A close up of the moss.  I have at least four different kinds of moss growing. 

This is a look at the dry stream from both sides in the area of the 'posts'.  After the posts, the stream takes another turn and disappears under the ferns.  I have moss on the outer side of the deck of the dry stream. I cut the ferns off that try to grow in the moss, but leave the Welsh poppies grow.  They are a bright yellow, delicate flower and look great with the moss.  Just up from where the dry stream takes its second curve there are helebores an azalea, more ferns and another rhodo by the deck support post.  When cleaning up this area I was surprised at how few violets there actually were.  I thought this was going to be a 2 day job, but it actually took very little time.  The moss is coming along really very well.  I must try to keep it all moist.   I saw only one slug and one of those little green snails.  On the side of the dry stream that is farther under the deck, I have solemons seal, a variegated evergreen little shrub that I clip, and I let the violets grow on this side.  On the other side of the ferns there is a bleeding heart plant that is surviving.

This is a view of the whole pond.  The marsh marigold on one side and the little lebanon cedar on the other.  There are campanula and saxifragia on the side that is at the bottom of the photo, with iris to the right and the water hawthorn in middle in bloom.  If you look closely you can see the frog.

This is the frog.  I think it is one of those big ones that is taking over the habitat of our indigenous species of frogs.  It is about half the size of the big one I had in my pond before.  I don't know how I can catch it.  When it leaps and dives into the water when it hears me coming it makes this weird squeaking noise.   I don't think it ate the fish, as the new ones I purchased are still in the pond. 

The water fall is now running a bit too fast, but better fast than too slow.  You see the marsh marigold and the sweet flag.  The sides of the water fall are slowly growing moss.  I must get some moss growing on the bottom of the mermaid or find a better place for her to sit.

Garden in February

 

The Anna's hummingbirds have over wintered.   They seem to have survived.

The view of the drystream meandering under the deck.  The moss is luxuriant under the steps and up to outter post that holds up the deck.  The rest of the moss garden needs more encouragement.  It is coming along nicely, considering I just started it last summer.    This is a view of the water garden from deck.  Photos from the 15 of February.

Today when I went to throw fish food over the deck railing into the pond I was dismayed to see that the pond was about one quarter empty.  I had just topped it up two days ago.  So, this required immediate action to rectify the situation.  Some of the stones from under the little Lebanon cedar had slid into the pond.  They were on the pot ledge, so I could reach them and drag them out.  I examined the area around the pond and found no other damage.  I can only assume that the water fall was running too  fast and I was losing water out the side of it.  Either that or there was a great pink elephant drinking and I missed it!  I cleaned the filter on the pump and reset it to run at a lower feed of water to the fall.  And topped up the pond again.  I shut off the pump to the waterfall.  If I lose water again, I will have to consider that I have a serious pond leak in the pond.  I have no idea what I would do if that is the case.  Perhaps get the pond done professionally.  Later in the afternoon I went out to see if the water level had changed.  The water level seemed to be topped up.  AND.. I saw the fish... I could count at least 6 of them.  So, if there was a creature in the pond, it had not been after the fish.  I have some black plastic pipe where the fish can hide from predators, too.  My fish are very wary and do not even come up to feed.

I have most of my clothes ready to pack for our trip.  I need to have the legs of one pair of pants  shortened.  Tomorrow I shop again.  I would like to get a couple or three blouse tops and some very comfy black pants for traveling.  

James and Bruce have finished the restoration of Pat's 1912 Ford Torpedo Roadster.  It looks great.  I hope to get photos of it tomorrow, or soon, too.  They say it will be slower than the Speedster, but it has a roof, doors and glory be! a windshield.  Not nearly as wild as the Speedster but far more comfortable!  Excitement abounds at our house!

Cyrus has got Megashot moved to the new cloud servers.  They are having a few little delays in sorting it all out but today it was great, fast and more and more people joining and building their pages.  No new communities yet.  We are over 100 registered now.  It is going to mushroom, fast.  People seem very impressed with the quality of photography and photo art on the site and are very protective of the site.  We have soooo many great features... not all totally finished yet... but they are in the works.  One that really rocks is the ability to make a slideshow with music on our profile presentation.  In fact, when they are finished building this feature, we will be able to make up to 20 of these slideshows, and save each of them in a playlist.

The water garden today

The water hawthorn is in bloom. This is zoomed into the digital zoom, so there is noise. Too bad about the evergreen needle caught in the leaves, but it gives you some idea of the size of the flower.

I was attempting to 'freeze' the water with long exposure in the TV mode. I really should have been in manual mode and setting both time and aperture. This is 1/6 sec at f 7.1. Using a tripod would help too.

There are at least two kinds of lichens on the plum tree.

The light came pouring down
One more for the sparkling waters series

Metrocascade has changed its format. I actually like it better this way. It makes the site into more of a news worthy read. I can still find gardening - where my blog appears, and other subjects as well. Good work, gentlemen -- it looks good.

I emptied 2 inches of water from the rain gauge today. The sun came out for a minute, but before I could jump into my boots and jacket, the sun was gone. I really do need to get more leaves off the grass again. The tree might have 1/3 of its leaves hanging on yet.

Gardening

I have managed to get the pond edges fixed, added the new pump, cleaned up the water plants and filled the pond. I had an extra rock to use on the rock path. I could use a few more nice flat rocks in the path. I have yet to clean up the Japanese garden area next to the pond.
Out front, I have raked the leaves off the grass and the rock plants a couple of times. There is still quite a few leaves on the tree.
I tried to load my video of the waterfall here, but it does not seem to want to finish processing. It has uploaded, as far as I can tell. This has been in the process for over 30 minutes. That is a bit ridiculous. well, just as I typed that, it finally loaded.

More of the waterfall

A couple more photos of the waterfall of the p0nd in my back garden. The top part of the waterfall is growing some nice moss. This moss reminds me of the mossy fountains along the main street in Aix en Provence, in France. The fountains are spring fed. You cannot see the water running in the fountains because they are all overgrown with the lovely green moss that is fed slowly from the springs. The water in my waterfall is running a bit too fast to achieve that effect; unless, I let the moss grow thicker to intercept the water flow and/or slow the flow down to a trickle. I think I like it the way it is now. I will just encourage more moss to grow, if possible. The moss does wick away the water, so I will need to be more diligent about topping up the pond. Until I get plants to grow over the edges and hang down, this pond does not look good when it is not topped up. I suppose I could bury a hose that fed directly into the p0nd with a slow drip to keep it topped up. I might do this. I really should raise the flat stones and move them closer to the apple tree... thus removing more grass from the soggy (in winter) part of the lawn and giving me a more dry surface to walk on in the winter. I could bury the dripping hose at the same time. I would to need to dig out one of the old Y hose connectors.. or get a new one.

I clipped the big boxwood hedge and did quite a bit of cleaning up of the old perennials in the front, up to the cedar hedge. I have the little honeysuckle hedge and the little boxwood to clip yet. Neither one need much work as they have not grown much since their last clipping. The dandilions need attention all over the garden.

Today I made a pot roast in the pressure cooker. I followed the recipe. I don't think my pressure cooker is working quite right. It took twice as long as it should have.. the roast may not have been totally unthawed though. Was very good anyway. I seem to be managing to lose a bit of weight... not much, but its encouraging to see even a couple of pounds gone. There was no big carbohydrates in the pot roast, except what is in potatoes. So, I hope I managed another day of less intake than required.

Tomorrow, Easter Sunday, the guys go up to Ladysmith and see the Zust in its debut. Wish I had asked to go with them as it would be great to get some photos of it, and see it, in its racing form. Hopefully there will be other opportunities. I am getting quite a few hits on my blog post where I quoted the newspaper interview that the Blackstaffs did a few months ago. Its all very exciting for the antique car hobby to have the Zust right here on our Island!! AND restored!! New York to Paris race - 100th anniversary, the Zust finished third.