Bartolli's Pond

Right, after nearly two months the decking was officially finished today! Hurrah!!  :banana: Main excuse is all the rain, I've been waiting 5 weeks for the rain to stop so I could get it treated, which I managed to do last weekend. Todays final mission was to trim the weed-suppressing membrane & to "dress" the decking, as well as chaining the table/chairs & chimnea to strong hasps screwed into the wall, hopefully that will deter the local scallies  :knuppel2:

Attached photo shows final result. There is a pond in front of the decking but you can't see much of it from this angle!

The Laguna filter is positioned under the decking by the small white flowers in the pot. Well hidden!

Cleaned the filter again yesterday, got 4 lovely buckets full of gungey water for the pots/tubs.

While rearranging the tubs around the decking, I disturbed a 1" froglet, excellent,  O0  Hermit the Frog is no longer a Hermit! Mind you, maybe he got used to the peace & solitude and hates having pesky kids around!

Also a gorgeous black & yellow dragonfly popped in this afternoon, beautiful but no chance of a photo.

Took some more pond readings, same as usual!

Have decided to get rid of the mint in the autumn, cos it is just too vigorous for our small pond. Its a lovely plant, the bees/butterflies love it but the suckers/roots it sends out are too invasive and I end up with new mint plants throughout the pond clogging everything up. I'm trimming bucketfuls every few weeks, if it stayed in its pot it would be fine, so it'll be gone in a few weeks.

The water is nice and clear, although the waterfall gets a bit more BW since I installed the filter & reduced my cleaning regime!

Will rehome the two biggest black baby fishies into Aged P's pond later this month, if they grow as much as their siblings did after they were transplanted they may even start to get a bit of colour, plus the remaining babies will have a bit more room.

Slightly dissappointed with Hermit the Frog's performance in the slug-eating championships, a resounding victory for slugs this year.  >

Cos the mint has finished flowering I decided to get rid of it yesterday, an hours work I thought!

5 hours & lots of aches later one bin bag was full of mint and mint roots! See the before & after photos below.

In the process disturbed two gorgeous little froglets.

Now that the lefthand side of the pond is declogged, the fish seem happy to have a bit more space to explore. And its nice to see a bit more of the pond, although I must admit that I think it looks a little bare without the mint!!

I'm now on the lookout for a good, non-invasive pond plant which flowers in late summer.

Todays mission, should I choose to accept it, is to clean out the filter.

Still desperate for frogs! Everyone else has them as well as tonnes of spawn, but not me!

Recently transferred 2 batches of spawn from Aged P's pond, but saw some advice that this is not reccomended cos of spreading some frog virus.

Saw our first frog on Sunday 16th, hurrah! Rather bloated (but gorgeous) thing floating in pond, presumably waiting for some hot frog action, hope she's not dissappointed!

Still trying to learn how to upload photos!

 

Hurrah it worked!

OK, cheated slightly, last photo was from last year!

Noticed a bit of BW this am, so removed as much as I could, water very clear & fishies look happy!

While doing that, was very pleased to see that Aged P's frogspawn has resulted in a few taddies, so if just 1 frogamorphosises I'll be very happy!

As it was such a gorgeous day, had a little tidy up:

removed a bit more BW, hopefully when the plants start growing a bit the BW will stop, disturbed a few fat taddies in the process!
Cleaned out the gravel in the waterfall pools, and gave the filter a clean;
Fishies were quite interested to see what was going on!
Did some water tests, all in order;
Whilst topping up the pond, two fluffy longtailed *** landed in the cotoneaster (not 10 ft away) and started picking off the early greenfly, gorgeous birds! Watched them for 10mins!

The annual slug war has started early this year, with the new delphinium leaves being nibbled to ****.   Have decided on a multi-pronged-combined assault on all fronts this year:

My usual bi-weekly nightly slug hunts armed with torch, skewer & bucket;
My usual beer traps at strategic locations;
Have ordered some copper rings to put around the hostas & delphinium (in the meantime silver-foil around the delphinium);
Have ordered loads of self-adhesive copper tape to go round all the pots;
Have started eating grapefruit for breakfast, the used halves go out in the garden & get inspected in the morning with the slimy b*****s being removed;
Any ash from the chimenea & barby will go straight around the hostas (already had the chimenea out twice this year!);
Will transplant some chives & garlic chives around the hostas & delphiniums as the smell is supposed to deter them!

Finally, I read somewhere that a spray filled with water/vinegar and applied to the plants will put them off, so I might try this in a weak solution!

Anyway this is supposed to be a pond diary not a slug diary so thats enough about them.

Hey, the automatic censoring thing has blanked out my ***! 

In case anyone is confused they were longtailed t.i.t.s. (Hope that worked!)

 Haven't seen Ginger for a couple of weeks, all the other fish are out & about so a bit concerned.

Tidied up one of the baskets this morning before it started to rain, all the fish came to see what I was doing but not Ginger.

I don't think a herons been, cos the other fish haven't been hiding plus no mess in the pond plus never seen a heron visiting before, so I think the favourite culprit is a new B+W cat that has been visiting, despite being warned off by our cat, Parsley.

Don't think our cat has had ginger cos whenever she catches anything (usually a mouse) she brings it in to show off and play with it.

We've had Ginger since we set up the pond, her & Whitey were the first inhabitants, and they even had kids the following year so a bit sad she's gone. On the plus side we've still got 8 fish left.

 

 Ginger & Whitey last year.