Right now the weather is in a pattern of 50 degree days and 30 degree nights, which averages (given the warmth the pumps provide) about 48 degrees for the pond, of course a little cooler near the absolute surface.
I got hold of the pond store, and they will begin getting their new fish around mid-April, with a week of quarantine, before sale. This store is quite clean, no problems with contagion, so this should work fine. By mid-April the pond should be warmed into the high 50’s at least.
I told them our list, two main ones, a yamabuki ogon (shortfinned metallic gold) and a platinum butterfly fin, which is shiny white. I also want a blue-sided butterfly (a crossbred asagi, I think); a brilliant orange; one orange and white spotted; and maybe a pair of the black ones. That’s 7, which is a conservative population for a 5000 gallon pond. We might see one we can’t resist. But those are what we’re looking for. When we get a nice bright day (it’s raining again) I’ll see if I can get pix of the restored pond before the netting. It’s clear as a mountain stream right now. You can see all the bottom. The water lilies should like the amount of light their trial lilypads are getting down there.
This timeline should give you some uninterrupted time to work on (or finish) Alliance Rising before introducing the babies… My normal “tip” to propitiate the banik will be arriving to celebrate Convergence. Closed Circle didn’t give me the expected screen to direct the donation (it’s for CJ) and the Donations tab on Closed Circle is having problems connecting to PayPal. It took an inordinately long time to get through the wickets at PayPal, but did work the second time I tried. It also took a long time to return to Closed Circle on the redirect, but everything looks copacetic now.
Thank you so much. The bannik is on point this year—things are going fast.
Good on Jane for doing all the leg work and pond prep. Cleaning out the pond and replacing all the rocks must have been a truly thankless task. Assuming nothing goes wrong with the fishies for a good long while, do you have any ideas to keep cruft out of the pond, or is that just in the nature of things that happen, baji-naji?
Clearing out 10 years of accumulated muck will help. Of course being surrounded by tall trees does give us autumn and spring gifts with every windstorm, but I have something I didn’t have in early years of the pond, a British product that helps with the chemistry of the pond.
I still think you ought to do a video tour with narration. The Fabulous Fancherry Gardens, Jewel of Spokane.
With our new setup on the site, that might become possible.
Are you having Shejicon this year?
Alas, no. With LUCK we might be doing the kitchen remodel. At very least we’ll get the baseboards done! This is our year to stay home and do all the things we’ve postponed doing.
No “Showa Sanshoku”?
Don’t know about mid-April? Pruned my apples around the officially auspicious President’s Day, a month ago, but nothing is leafing out! Not the apples, cherries, black nor English walnuts, nor oaks!
I love that color pattern, but we haven’t had great luck keeping the colors. SOmebody was saying on line somebody had just paid 6000 dollars for a large champion fish and couldn’t understand why they were keeping it in the home pond in Japan. I’m figuring, a) breeder and b) red color pattern. There’s something in the home waters (who knows, maybe a rice diet) that preserves a red color that may fade in American waters.
WE are not getting a 6000 dollar koi, for sure. We’re looking more in the 10 dollar range or less. The babies once culled for super-champions are thank goodness not that! We don’t apply show standards here.
Here’s a really good article on the problems of color in koi: http://www.koi.com/reference/unique/11.php and here’s one with pix of the color type Paul is talking about. http://www.lagunakoi.com/Koi-Varieties/Showa-Sanshoku-p-37.html
Re trees leafing, the quince by my window is definitely breaking buds, but the tall fence and pond do moderate the temperature in the back yard, summer and winter. I’d say bud-breaking has to be real close. Time to unwrap the mimosa trunks.
There is some, can I call it “precendent”, for red & black, of course. [G,D&R]
Is that like calling shogun for the right seat? GD&R, likewise. 😀
Laguna Koi? Nearly in my backyard! Shogun!
lol.
You should pick out/order a “hi utsuri”. Shejidanii would “get it”.
I’ve just gotten another copy of Foreigner (AKA book #1) to send to my 1st cousin removed x2, who is a voracious reader. She’s a newly minted teenager (13), and I figure she’s old enough now that she’s catchable by the hooks in that book and can get pulled into the story/world. I want to turn her on to the deeper. more sophisticated books that are out there, and I think Foreigner is a good book to entice her further into the good stuff. She’s an only child, sharp as a tack, and both her parents are engaged, intelligent and well-educated people. Your books are books that can be grown into. They are so layered that you can go back to them again and again and keep finding stuff you missed the last time through. I think this is the fourth or fifth copy of that book I’ve bought with the intention of turning people onto the series.
Still knitting, although the work goes slowly as I can only knit on them for a couple of hours at a time, owing to the thickness of the yarn. But you (plural) will get them before next year. . . .
Mmmm. Sneaky. We love it.
What, no $10,000 Koi? How cheap. Seriously though, I hope that the new koi grow and thrive You certainly do care about them.
I see online that some people keep their koi in a large plastic tub indoors over the winter. I suppose that if they grow quite large this will not be an option.
I have tried to initiate my granddaughter to the CJ Cherryh books – starting with the Chanur series, but she did not take to them. When she is a little older, she is 11, I will try again.
It snowed yesterday up here in NH. Any koi will need sweaters.
Jonathan
A tub is the best answer for small ones. When they start pushing 2′ in length, they do better in a pond.
Probably 11 is still too young to respond to the goings-on in Chanur. Thirteen, maybe.