We're having quite the adventures with our yard. We seem to have the most problems with our trees. This is our bungi catalpha in the back yard. Only 1/3 of the tree grew back at the beginning of the summer. What was amazing was our local nursery had us cut off all the dead branches which was 3/4's of the tree. In two weeks, the entire tree was full & beautiful again. I love how resilient trees are. What a great metaphor for life.
This is my first attempt at a garden. I learned A LOT and can't wait to try again next summer.
The peppers were my favorite! I wouldn't do lilac again though. Too tough & bitter for me.
We had 6 grape tomato plants which kept us and my entire office in grape tomatoes all summer. Yum!
I loved putting together a meal from the garden. I suddenly grew an understanding of why mom always beams when she prepares meals straight from the garden. I'm so excited for next
Oh the annual pond cleaning. This was our first time cleaning out the entire pond by ourself. It was a 6 hour process that I think we will have down to 2 hours next year. The biggest problem up front was getting the water out of the pond. We had purchased a shop vac that would suck up water when we first bought the house but we quickly learned that would take FOREVER.
Jake being the creative thinker that he is made the coolest pond pump. He bought some piping and hooked it to our waterfall pond pump. Turned it on and drained the stinking pond in 10 minutes flat. It was awesome!!
Grass got a good watering.
Once the pond was low enough. I hoped in & started catching fish. We fill up a large bin full of pond water with all the healthy bacteria & put the fish in there with a fish tank pump to give them oxygen.
After that I moved out all the plants and spent the next 2 hours scraping rocks and sludge from the bottom of the pond. Sludge = fish poo mixed w/ decomposed plant matter. Stinks!
Next is rinsing off all the algie and sludge with a hose. You have to leave some algie to keep the water healthy with bacteria. We also just leave all the algie on the waterfall rocks. It dries during the winter & is a piece of cake to get off in the spring.
Last is fill the pond up, drain it again, cut the pond plants down, put them all on the bottom, & fill the pond up again. You also have to put in a chemical to protect the fish from all the chlorine in the hose water. So the fish stayed in their temporary home for 2 days until we got that in.
I've learned to really enjoy working in my pond. I no longer scream at the snakes. I just name them & try to convince them that if they let me pick them up I will take them to the canal which will be like a frat house full of snakes. I don't think snakes have ears. Terrible listeners.
We woke up to 5 inches of snow in October when previous days weather was in the high 70's. The pond looked so pretty in the snow.
What wasn't pretty was my bungi catalpha in my front yard.
Grrrrrrrrrrr!!!
2 comments:
I LOVE that you're gardening. Tell me something though: how come everyone can grow tomatoes except me?? What's the effing secret!!??
Mmmmmmm....the secret to tomatoes. I don't know. I'm going with water. We had to water them a lot. We also put in a huge thing of compost right before we planted to give the soil a boost. And TONS of sun. Otherwise I don't know. Maybe it's the area you're in. Oh I also learned that tomatoes take FOREVER to blush. But if you pick them right when they start to blush, the plant will divert it's energy to the unblushed tomatoes. Plus they ripen faster off the vine. This also prevents bugs as the bugs only go for tomatoes once they are nearly ripe. They don't like them when they are green.
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