News from the Garden

Dear Jackson,

I so much wanted to write you a letter, and I am overdue for my next blog post, so I am killing two birds with one stone.  I hope as a fellow blogger you will understand.

I spent this morning catching Fanny and the Comets (our own rock band) so that I could clean their pond.  I prepared a giant bucket that was part of a shop vac before the vac gave up the ghost, filling it with a couple of smaller buckets of their current pond water so that it was half full.  Fanny and the Comets are as fast as they always were when they had a lot of water to swim in, but as I emptied the pond they had nowhere to go but into the smaller bucket.  They are huge, even bigger than they were last spring.  I emptied each bucket carefully, not wanting to pour our fish on the ground, but I didn’t see Fanny in the murky water and poured her onto the mud.  Before she could flop twice I grabbed her carefully and gently with both hands; she was the first into the shop vac bucket.  I was timidly cautious catching the Comets; they went into the bucket without mishap.

Once the fish were in the big bucket and that bucket was in the shade, I started cleaning the pond.  The poor fish; what a disgusting way to live!.  And yuck, what a job!  The sides of the pond were thickly coated with algae – just imagine thick green slime.  First I took all the stones I could reach out of the pond, then removed the basket with the iris and the ceramic baking pan. After taking the pond liner out of the hole we had dug for it two years ago, I brushed the algae off with a very stiff brush, and kept rinsing with a powerful stream of water.  After an hour of brushing and rinsing, the pond looked clean and I looked filthy and smelled very fishy.  I put the cleaned ceramic pan back in; propped up, it still offered a hiding place.  I put the big slate stepping stone over the east side of the pond instead of the west, figuring that the stone would offer shade and cover from the big black cat that prowls my back yard.  I replaced the iris basket.  Fanny and the Comets swam around eagerly once they were back home.  I fed them and replaced the bird netting over the pond.  Fanny is lumpy again, but a diet of fresh peas should help with that.  I put a wooden chaise-lounge, from Aunty Polly’s last move, over the pond to shade it.  It offers dappled shade.  Eventually a small tree might provide better shade to the fish.

After we had installed the pond a couple of years ago, I moved the table Aunty Polly gave me over to the edge of it.  I hoped the table’s umbrella would shade the pond.  The umbrella gave a little shade in the winter, when we didn’t need it, and offered inadequate shade in the summer.  Wind blew the table and umbrella over onto the fish pond's rim a couple of times.  When the table was by the fish pond the table was an uncomfortable place to sit.  The chairs sank into the dirt if anyone sat on them, and the side of the table next to the fish pond could not be used.  It was past time to move the table and chairs.

A few years ago I had removed a brick patio from the front of the house to put a shady flower garden there; I piled the bricks neatly under the upstairs deck in the back.  I decided today to make a patio in the backyard between the stairs to the studio and the baby apple tree with those bricks. I worked on the patio for several hours.  The internet advises digging a hole, deeper than brick-deep, to make a patio, then leveling the hole, filling it with a shallow layer of sand, leveling that and then carefully placing the bricks.  My bricks are too old and twisted to warrant so much work.  I just mowed the back yard, put down mulch cloth where the patio is to go and started laying the bricks.  After a good start, I discovered that the ground wasn’t as level as I thought.  I’m going to pick up the bricks that are below level, fill the space with sand, level it, and put those bricks back.  I wonder if smoothing the bricks with sandpaper afterwards would help get a more useful surface for Aunty Polly's table and chairs.

The next big project, erecting a four-foot high dog-eared fence between my back yard and the neighbor’s, only awaits the neighbor’s permission. The fence would provide my tenant and the neighbor’s tenants a little privacy.  After that I hope to top the bare bottom of the garden with topsoil and plants.

Last week I spent a couple of afternoons digging holes so that the two-inch high stepping stones that came with the house are level with the ground.  I had tripped over these a number of times before last week.

The back garden is looking better.  It has a clean fish pond, a mowed lawn, a couple of new camellias, a rose bush and a small rhododendron.  I planted broccoli and cauliflower in the raised bed/compost heap by the fishpond, but I think the skunk that lives under my neighbor’s garden shed may have eaten them; the once flourishing plants are just stubs now.  Oh well, it’s a good bed for tomatoes anyway.

The front garden is beautiful now.  The blooming lilacs are generous this year and the dogwood tree is in bloom.  The bluebells and Brunnera bloom bluely in the shade garden, contrasting with the graceful pink arches of bleeding heart, and the peonies have put up their shiny leaves.

 I hope you can come see the fish, the garden, and me soon.

Love,

Grannie