Life

I remembered to take some pictures last night!

My newly cleaned out flowerbed:

Yes there are trees growing that Todd needs to cut out. I'm planning on dividing/moving some of my daylillies, black eyed susans, purple coneflowers, coral bells and iris and putting in here. I do have in there a couple daylillies, an iris, a hosta, a miniature hollyhock and some coral bells which I'm intending to keep there. Of course, now that it is relatively empty, I need to get more mulch.

The daylillies are just starting to bloom:

The clematis is blooming:

Question for anyone? These clematis are behind some rhododendron's. So we have not been able to "train" them to go up the deck. As soon as Todd gets a free moment, he is pulling out the rhododendrons for me - they are looking really sickly and have for a number of years now. Can I cut the clematis off at ground level to hopefully train them better next year? I love this purple one - there are 3 of them back in behind the rhody's - a white one, a purple one and a burgendy one.

The bog filter on the pond is really kicking in and the pond is now crystal clear (almost). The downside is I found more baby fish in the pond over the weekend. I think we are up over 20 fish now - hopefully I can find friends and family that want some fish!!!

And this is what we worked on last night. Or rather, Todd, Tyler and a friend of ours worked on. I was told my job was to bring cold drinks and keep them coming.

I love it when my job is simple!

Have a great day

Kris

Have shovel.....will travel

My "mother's day" present was a stream. And I was thrilled with it. So on Sunday morning (bright and early I might add) Todd got busy and dug my stream.




Sorry I don't have to many in process photos:





The upper pond was filled in with stone (to creat the bog filter that will keep the big pond with the fish crystal clear here in about a week), rubber hose was laid, and the stream was dug. It's still not finished (we need more stone in the upper pond to raise the water level a little), and I need to finish putting rocks in and around the stream bed, but......it's functional.




This weekend Todd is building me a bridge over the stream. When we get around to finishing the concrete for the sidewalk, we will be able to get into the house through the basement to take off boots and heavy coats in the winter. And they will be out of my kitchen.


While he did that (because shovels do not fit my hands) I weeded most of my flowerbeds, cut down high weeds in the new flower bed and started raking it smooth, and transplanted a bunch of flower.


Tyler has already asked if his army guys can go white water rafting.....and we have 3 friends/acquaintances/neighbors who want water gardens put in.....

Monday

What a great weekend. We went and looked at a calf Friday night, Saturday morning both kids had soccer games (it was FREEZING, but at least the sun was out) and during the afternoon I mowed the yard and started working on my water garden.

We had gotten it dug last year, the liners in and filled with water and fish. And then it sat. Todd was working Saturday afternoon, so I started hauling rocks. I have all the rocks around it and we are to the point of leveling the dirt around it, putting down mulch and planting flowers (ignore all the weeds - I can't get in there with the riding mower, so we had to spray them last night).

Our plan is to turn the old, small pond into the filtration system for the bigger pond, and have a stream connecting the two of them. And that still needs done, but that involves lots of shovel work .....and the shovel doesn't fit my hands, really.

When we went to PA in early April, Todd's uncle gave us 4 purple martin birdhouse gords. We got them up a couple weeks ago, and last night saw birds flying all around them.

We were so hopeful they were purple martins, but it turns out they were tree swallows.

So the gords came down, we put bluebird houses up last night, and hopefully the swallows will relocate!

And Tyler and Jessie were able to walk their heifers this weekend - this is Tyler and Mittens.

Have a great day!
Kris

Aprons & Fish

School went good for Jessie - she made it through the whole day with not a whole lot of swelling in her arm and hand. But she was fine with laying around most the evening with ice on her arm to help the swelling go down.

We played in the pond somewhat last night - all my plants and fish are moved over. Tonight and tomorrow night we hope to put the rocks around it. Then it's dig the bog filter, plant it and DONE. Just in time for winter. Originally, I was going to have 2 ponds, but after thinking on it, we decided to get rid of the little pond that we had originally built, and use the materials from that to finish the bigger, new pond we dug a while back.

And once again, my fish had babies, and we had 11 babies this fall at some point (or at least, 11 that we caught). So we are now up to 25 fish, but I am giving some of the babies and the white ones from last year to a friend.

I love this cherry print fabric so much - another apron was in order. Although I did make this one a little too small - but it still works:

And I worked on a fall coat for my niece for her birthday after the kids were in bed (at 8:15 - they were tired) - hopefully tonight it will be done and I can post a picture of it. While it won't be as cute as this one, it should work the way I want it to.

Kris

Road Trip!!!!

What a wonderful trip we took yesterday to Green Vista Water Gardens. And I am so in love with water gardens now - even much more so than before. The store was in Springfield, Ohio (close to Dayton) - 2 1/2 hours away. We left right after both of our girls got on their respective buses, and hit the road.

Once there, they had about 10 different display ponds. We walked around, looked at fish, looked at plants and DREAMED. Here are some of their display ponds:

I am not a big fan of formal ponds like this (above) - but I am a HUGE fan of these 2 little boys - Tyler and Hunter (Hunter has the red hair).

Pondless water fall (above).

These ponds are more my style.

We ended up coming home with 4 pots of flowers, some underwater oxygenating plants, and Kellie brought her new pump and filter system. The plants - we each brought 2, figuring they were so big, we are going to divy them up tomorrow (Sunday when I help her clean out her pond and get her new pump and filter up and running) and then we will each have 4.

Tyler was such a good little boy - he just went along for the ride, but he did say on the way home he wants his own water garden pond.

And I didn't buy a single fish - I have probably way more fish than I actually should in my little pond, so until we build another one (hopefully sometime this summer) I decided I had better not add to the fish population here on the farm. For anyone who is interested, water gardens are so much easier to maintain than flower beds. I spent about 2 hours cleaning mine out the other day, and now it will only take me about 15 minutes a week to maintain it - and there is no weeding involved.

My own little pond - after it's cleaning:)

I did get some really, really good ideas and now can hopefully spend this weekend moving flowers around in my water garden and around it in my regular flower beds. But first, I have a little boy who has a soccer game, and I need to go buy a new leaf rake today so I can finish cleaning out the rest of my many flower beds seeing as how I broke mine 2 years ago chasing some stray dogs who were chasing the horses.



Hope everyone has a sunny weekend!!

Kris