Friday, July 26: a storm was brewing so Wren wore her new Thunder Shirt.
Friday, July 26
Tuesday, July 30
Tuesday, July 30
Wednesday, July 31
Wednesday, July 31
Wednesday, July 31
Thursday, August 1
Underwater roots as thick as my forearm
Thursday, August 1
Still Thursday…
Friday, August 2
Friday morning, before working
Friday evening, after working, same angle
This afternoon, before a quick dip just to cool off — no work today!
Progress has been slow but steady in the pond this week. Even though it’s hard work sawing through those roots and hefting chunks up onto the edge, it’s gratifying. The water is cool and buoyant, and I don’t hurt when I’m in it. A lot remains to be done, but there is plenty of hot weather ahead to enjoy doing it in. This afternoon, in 96℉, I cooled off and tried one method to lift sludge from the pond floor. It wasn’t too effective, so I’ve begun researching other options. Anybody got a pond vacuum I can borrow?! Meanwhile, GT will have his work cut out for him moving all the rush chunks I’ve cut out of the water.
The rushes overtook the pond, choking the life out of it, in much the same way that pain and other health concerns sapped my own vitality: encroaching incrementally, unobtrusively, until suddenly I was forced to pay attention and found both the pond and my joie de vivre unrecognizably congested. I am grateful that I’ve seen the light before it’s too late, and have begun to rectify both conditions.
This image from a decade ago shows the beginning of the problem. I can’t believe I don’t have a better image of the pond in its heyday! Lots of closeups, but nothing on here of the full feature. I’ll have to dig through the archives for an image of the full pond when it was born in 2008.
“How many frogs? Through benign neglect of my fish ponds they’ve become frog ponds….” This image and caption are from 2016, when I counted more than a dozen frogs in the pond.
And in wildlife rescue, this morning Wren found a baby robin chirping on the path by the spigot. I didn’t even see it, but noticed her cautiously investigating from a foot away. She was a very good girl! So curious. I scooped it up and set it in the chokecherry tree so it would be safe until it could fly. When I checked this evening it was gone.
Garden Buddy brought over a bag with a notebook of instructions, sample rag strips, and crochet hooks, and gave me a lesson. I’m grateful for her generosity in providing not only all the materials I need to finally learn to hook a rag rug, but also her time and confidence that I’d get the hang of it. My first effort (below) started a little rough, partly because I’m learning, and partly because I chose to start with a favorite old shirt that was so worn it kept tearing apart as I pulled it through the loops.
But I’m persevering! It’s not a perfect circle like Garden Buddy’s are, but that’s okay.
The Pond Project continues. This morning I took the photos above, to show the root masses and silt, and also the clarity of the water once it’s finally visible again. This afternoon, 95℉, I went in and cleared some more slabs of reeds. Below is a slightly wider angle on the same stretch above, after another hour’s work. I built a wall taller than Wren with the rushes I removed.
And then I rested… ahhh! Looking back on the progress: I cleared a canal from the north end where there are steps to enter, along the west side, and across to the southeast edge where there is a built-in bench. I’ve taken the recommendation of an Australian physiotherapist to add water therapy to my exercise routine: I don’t think this is what he had in mind, but the truth is, simply being in the water eases the pain. He said something about about hydrostatic pressure alone being beneficial. I’m grateful that my wrists and shoulders are strong enough now to do this work again, even though I let it lapse another three years, making it that much more challenging.
This morning I baked some burger buns, in anticipation of tonight’s dinner…
I’ve been wanting to try these Mushroom turkey cheeseburgers for a couple of weeks, and finally had time and all the ingredients, including an onion from the garden (more about garden onions soon!) I’m grateful to learn this trick: You pulse the mushrooms in a food processor with a pinch of kosher salt, and then squeeze them finely chopped in a clean towel, releasing a bunch of liquid, and leaving a mass with much the texture of ground meat; then mix in with the ground turkey, make patties, and grill. So simple, so delicious!
I’m grateful to have experienced today the joy of being helped. After visiting on Thursday, Hilary offered to come help me clean up the pond. I’ve been waiting three years for the right day and the right person to help with this overwhelming task. Today it all came together. It was cool enough to work pulling and cutting around the pond, yet hot enough to then get into the pond to work. The two little dogs found shade under the garden cart. Stellar mostly stayed inside, where it was cooler, on his soft bed.
Hilary pulled mint and chopped cattails, while I worked the Worx weedwhacker on weeds and grasses. After that we tackled the pond, clearing a huge biomass of rushes, roots, mint, muck, and a few accidental lilies. She did all the really hard work, cutting, chopping, loading the garden cart, hauling to the compost pile. While I got to wade in cool water, gently nudging, cajoling, and pulling up soft roots. I was careful with my hands, and it felt great to be doing something, however little, after all this time. Still, yes, I overdid, and am paying for it with extra pain this evening. What a gift her cheerful energy was, and how her mindful attention allowed me to trust her with the means and the goal: what plants to ‘harvest,’ which to leave, and the overall vision of simply liberating the free flow of water.
All the hours of hard work barely scratched the surface of the pond congestion after three years of letting it go wild. But it was a perfect project for an August afternoon, a great start. And I experienced the unusual sensation of letting someone help me who wanted to authentically enough, that by being helped I was giving her gratification also.
What was almost entirely overgrown now has lanes of clear water through it, a clean outlet, and water lilies that can breathe. Much more to clear eventually, but having made a good start with help and support, having overcome the inertia of that first step, I am grateful to know I can take a cooling dip once in a while, and nibble away at this elephant one bite at a time. I am grateful for help, and for the reverse gift of accepting help from one who wants to give it.
Today the garden is full of yellows, oranges and greens, and full of buzzing bees. Summer is a full on ride, roller coaster or tilt-a-whirl, it’s hard to know; reeling through colors and days so full.
July arrivals in the garden, the variously colored Ratibida, or Mexican Hats, and an unusual, fast bee that flies with its tip up.
At first I blamed the damn deer for demolishing one of my Roma tomatoes, until I looked closer. Love the little manatee hands.
Why do you think they call it Hornworm?
Little solitary bees work the tomato blossoms diligently.
And at last, overnight, one of the Early Girls begins to ripen.
The new raised bed in the south yard grows squashes from Earth Friendly Farm.
I transplanted them into walls-o-water, then implemented a trick I learned at a dinner party recently: keep the walls on longer than you’d think you need to, and turn them down into collars, to hold water better and protect the plants from wind.
All the squashes are thriving.
One of three visiting catahoulas, Jupiter, Last Son of Sundog, romps with Raven’s birthday bunny, still remarkably intact six weeks later.
I could not figure out what these tiny green beads were that the ants were so busy around, scattered in clusters along the path through the woods. Husks of tiny beetles! What’s up with that?
Amy-the-Fish, Finn, and a Progeny circle like sharks a moth stranded in the pond. Pollen speckles the surface.
I know better than to intervene in a natural contest between predator and prey. Just last week I read about the public outcry when a baby eaglet died in the nest on a live webcam stream, and the complications that ensued from a previous attempt to fix the broken wing of another webcam raptor baby. The more we are able to see the more there is not to like, sometimes. Rarely do I try to save prey from predator when I have the chance, even a baby bunny from one of my dogs because by the time I know about it it’s usually too late for the bunny.
Amy-the-Fish is fierce in her determination to capture this morsel.
More fish enter the fray as the moth continues to barely escape their snapping jaws.
This time I think for sure the moth is toast.
And it manages to climb onto a rush.
It’s been a fascinating five minutes for me, frustrating for Amy-the-Fish and her friends, and no doubt terrifying for the moth. At this point I figure I am merely an agent of the moth’s destiny when I dip in a finger and lift it to the safety of a sagebrush well away from the water. Sometimes you just have to do what you can.
Thinning carrots I came across this preying mantis who scuttled away from my hand just a few inches.
We took a media fast during our five day silent meditation retreat over the long weekend, eschewing TV, radio, and the internet. But I did several Camera Meditations in the garden, and gleaned from them that it is mating season in the insect world. Also, Summer has unequivocally turned the corner into Fall. Just in the last five days, mornings have become cool enough for a vest, and bedtime cool enough for silkies. Doors and windows can be left open all day, not closed up systematically to keep out hot breeze.
Then I discovered that it wasn’t one mantis scurrying, she had a small male clinging to her back, entwined in a fertile embrace.
The more I use this new lens, the more wonder I find in the garden.
Down at the pond a dragonfly laid eggs on cattails.
This depth of field on this lens is so shallow I can’t get in focus both the head and the tail at the same time. Note the ovipositors at the tip of the tail.
As she laid eggs, I followed her for awhile, then sat back to review my shots. So I missed the real show: the bright blue male flew in, swooped her up, and flew off with her. I heard, as I was looking down at my camera screen, a staccato commotion in the rushes, and looked up to see the linked dragonflies rise from the pond surface and zip up into a juniper tree, where I couldn’t follow. By stepping out of the present moment to look at a screen, I missed the best shot of real life.
The first daylilies bloomed down by the pond, joining Coreopsis, Callirhoe, silver sage, geranium, blue avena, and mingled penstemons. The Bombay wall is all but finished.
From the other direction, looking southeast along the Bombay Wall, cardinal flowers bloom crimson; columbine blossoms red and white before the marble tombstone of the little doctor vincent. meow.
Amythefish and Finn, startled from their lair under lily leaves, circle the first pink tethered blossoms in the bottom pond.
Golden elder’s fragrant wafting fans, panicles of tiny white flowers, bring a special memory, a smile. Bees are busy in the hive and out, crowding the doorway, building comb so close to the window now they’re curving it forward. Irrigation water on the mesa is over, finished. Fields that got no water at all this year are thin and brown. Alfalfa blooms sparsely elsewhere. The first and only hay crops of the season are falling, field by field, beneath the blades and swathers.
