…at least is still afloat, and you’ve all been very kind to us. It’s all thanks to you guys. And of course the fact that Jane wrote a great book! We’re also hopeful that people who buy that book will figure out where we are over here and come see us in all our riotous glory. Don’t forget to ‘approve’ each others’ reviews—
The net is off the koi pond, and we’ve seen a lot of our fishes—so glad about that. They’re looking good, and I’m dumping in some biological stuff [sewage, I swear, by the smell!] that I didn’t use last year, and hope that also will help. The water’s needing a serious water change—on a particularly warm day Jane and I are going to kit up in galoshes and drain the pond down quite a bit, then refill with clean water [and buffer and dechlorinator].
The front yard project awaits trees. But mostly rock. Patricia and Mike Briggs have lots of rock and have offered help. And we’re hoping to get that looking a lot better.
Meanwhile the house is an absolute wreck—cleanup after Christmas got stalled out by Closed Circle necessities, and here we are.
But doing well and happy.
Heh. Speaking of rocks. Friends of ours have a beautiful backyard pond. While it was being built (a slow process as the gentleman-I’ll call him Ra, as in the Egyptian god-did it all himself), rocks were needed in abundance. Ra picked them up everywhere, including roadsides, and collected them in the yard. His neighbors began to think maybe the rocks were really in his head. But the results are beautiful. He no longer keeps fish, though, because the local raccoons thought they were just too delicious.
We’ve done the stealing-rocks thing—two women in good clothes stop small Forester on roadside, bail out, open the back hatch, grab large basalt rocks, toss them in and speed off…
We figure we’re saving cars who need an emergency pulloff from hitting those things.
We’ve got two anti-raccoon measures in place: coyote urine powder and floating rings of irrigation hose, one with a 6′ sun-screen and the other a plain ring that contains our water hyacinth patch. We had one raccoon try to walk on hyacinth, to no great avail. We’ve had herons try; we did lose one fish, naturally one of our favorites, we think to a cat; and we hope coyote powder will work, or we’re setting up a water-jet scarecrow.
If you can beg borrow or steal clean barrels, you could fill them and let them stand until they’ve reached ambient temperature. Don’t know if it’s practical, but it would certainly blow your current itty-bitty windows of opportunity to change out the water wide open..
Do you have luck overwintering water hyacinth? I’ve had much better luck overwintering Pistia or Salvinia inside and then restocking outside once the temperatures are appropriate. These floaters can serve a similar purpose to the hyacinth. I have hardy water lilies (yellow and apricot minis) as well that overwinter and bloom each year just fine. That reminds me that I need to repot a bunch of lilies and shove them full of food tabs.
Great Blue Herons: All the stock tanks have wire coverings and that doesn’t keep Mr. Heron from trying. But I live under a flight path for a local rookery.
Cats: A non-issue due to Siberian husky presence.
Raccoons: Above-ground stock tanks help. Siberian huskies do as well. We have raccoons and coyotes all over the place so I can’t imagine coyote urine powder would deter the local raccoons since I’m sure coyote urine sign is ubiquitous outside my fenceline.
non-climbing mustelid fish predators –
River otters: One of the big local risks. Otters wiped out all the outside koi at a local koi business and they don’t have streams on the property and are within 2 miles of a lake containing otters. But once the otters found the place…disaster. I’m less than a mile from an active fish stream.
Minks: All over the place around here as well. My dogs have killed at least one mink (ended up in the Burke Museum). But my above-ground stock tanks foil both river otter and mink potential….they are too tall for these mustelids unless they learn how to levitate. Again, I’m less than a mile from a wetlands area with an active salmon stream.
Siberian huskies: Well, I’ve had them catch fish out of the lower mini-ponds (~ 33 g) I now use as live-food cultures for my inside fish. The larger/higher-sided stock tanks have solved that issue.