water lettuce
water hyancinth
This spring, I added a water hyacinth and a water lettuce plant to our tiny koi pond. The results have been wonderful. The roots of the multiplying plants act as filters and nursey; the leaves a place for koi to hide, and bugs to thrive.
The water lettuce also thrived. Sunday was time for another small cull. I love “mucking about” in water. Puddle-plopping and spring-stream-debris-clearing. Water-mucking such as floor washing or laundry is another story . . .
The pond is covered with bird netting to deter creatures and birds from snacking on the fish. The edges are held down by rocks. Removing these, sent a cicada, and several beetles skiddling. Pulling up the netting, caused at least three varieties of spiders to shimmy. Tiny black bugs jumped from lettuce leaf to lettuce leaf.
The sun was warm on my back, a breeze, more serotinal than autumnal stirred the Asian-type spruce branches above my head. Bumblebees filled their paniers with the last of the summer’s pollen. Gently petting one, I held my fingertip a second longer, feeling the bee’s thrum.
For a brief moment, then, the yard was once again “mine,” and not the de-natured pseudo-Château de Versailles it’s been tortured into. A #weeklysmile moment.
I agree with Trent: ‘I enjoy getting out into nature and the autumn is by far my favorite time of year to be out.” #weeklysmile, October 4, 2021
If you’ve had something to smile about (and I hope you do/did), visit Trent and see how you, too, can participate.
Lorraine's frilly freudian slip 
October 4, 2021 at 8:51 pm
Water mucking is much better out in a pond, even a small man-made one, just like dirt-mucking is better in the yard or garden than vacuuming or dusting… Sounds like a nice little touch with nature.
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October 5, 2021 at 3:53 am
Yes, and paper shredding is more satisfying sometimes than paper work.
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October 5, 2021 at 7:50 am
lol, maybe if you do it by hand, but to me feeding paper into the shredder is work ;)
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October 4, 2021 at 12:07 pm
oh wow – you’ve just waked/walked me right into a deep dive —- I’ve come up (rather reluctantly) for air, soaking – hope I didn’t startled the koi too much! 😂
this is filled with such delicate detail, such careful observations/notations – I feel like I’m right there, working away, and it’s lovely, delightful, a true Big Smile that spills out from my heart, splashing right up to my mouth …. I’ve had similar experiences when working with koi ponds (in my former life) and although it was mostly a right pain in the butt, your experience has reminded me of the littlest moments (way back when) that made the efforts (and ridiculous/stupid demands of the owners) special none-the-less ….
thank you for that – at the very least, I’m sitting here, feeling the water and sun, the warmth, lingering in the different energies of the critters and creatures, going about their secretive lives ….
must run — big geese stitching the sky …. making quite the ruckus 😁😁😆
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October 5, 2021 at 3:39 am
I remember when V’s of geese marked seasons — here, as I’ve said, it simply marks moving from one manicured lawn to another. Though, like all birds, I notice this less and less. Sigh.
I remeber travelling along the St. Lawrence River, and flocks of snow geese cut through the leaden skies. Amazing.
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October 5, 2021 at 10:02 am
oh yeah, snow geese are spectacular – don’t see them much – but the image, and ahh, sweet lead, how much you please me when your tapestry is an Autumn sky! Love the moodiness of this season and her skies!
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October 5, 2021 at 10:53 am
Serendip and co-inky-dinky. We’d had the wild goose chase chat, and what did I hear around 6:30 this morning — a large V of geese! I am directionally challenged, so I’m not sure if they were flying south. The sky was a murky tapestry, and I was taking my morning blood pressure, so I couldn’t go watch. But the vocalization seemed like a fairly large grouping.
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October 5, 2021 at 10:56 am
probably heading south – I can bet on it – they have been on the move for weeks now, more so in the past two I’d say, and if the weather is holding more towards nice – then they tend to dally a bit on their journey … so perhaps they were/are not too far off – better if they have space to land and graze and of course, water …. bodies of water = Happy Geese!
(hope the B.P. is in a good/acceptable range, has sorted itself back to “normal”)
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