Ponds in Canada

[Shoestring Ponder]

Be careful what you wish for!! I sure would love to send you some heat!! We had the high 90's today...sweltering!! I am so exhausted from working on the filter this morning before it got too hot out. This afternoon, I made more floating planters and set more plants afloat in the pond. I checked the water temp and it read 80*...way too hot for May! :glassesy: We set the sprinkler on the pond and boy did that bring the dragon and damseflys1


Gonna be another day like today tomorrow...sending some heat your way! :goldfish:

 

[addy1]

88 today, hot humid miserable, heat index up 96, tomorrow worse.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Help! Were always starved! Will beg for dog food! Puppies ate all our dog food! .......

 

[callingcolleen1]

Woke up real early today. Day off today and tomorrow, course I looked outside and it was raining, it is the middle of the night, puppies are going to hate this rain again. Having a glass of wine, then going back to bed.
Played by pond yesterday, got a kink in my neck from bending over funny, reaching for this rock and trying to adjust the wood and stuff, OK I was sencelessly moving the rocks around again, something I like to do. Another rock followed me home from the puppy river park again, collecting more rocks for this stream I'm dreaming up for the front yard.

My water experiments have no noticeable change, been too cold and not enough sun. If things don't change with the weather I'm going to get drastic and perform some "sun dance" or something. Ha ha

Water appears to have a darken hue to its color. Caterpillers are here in full force, chewed bites of leaf and stuff falling in pond, tons of caterpiller dung everywhere! You know when there is lots, you will see little black grains that look like dirt on the deck, they fall everywhere, in your hair too, and there not dirt! Ha ha ha Cleaned some of the filters yesterday.

 

[addy1]

You have some nice fish there. Darn hot and sticky here, plumbed in our big pump yesterday, took the day and two trips to the store for fittings, even with thinking you have all you need.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Thanks Addy. Those two big koi are really really big, and seeing them up close is shocking to some. I wouldn't know how to get them out of the pond. Good thing I never had to get them. I don't think I have even seen a net big enough in my travels around here to catch them with if I had too! The one big orange koi "Goldie" has got be be five pounds or so.

I have a lot of water circulation in the top two ponds cause some of the fish are so darn big. I think good circulation is needed for large koi, especially in the summer when its hot.... if it ever get here! (-:

 

[j.w]

Nice photos of your huge fish! We lost our sunshine here and rain is coming. I want heat also.........it was fun while it lasted :sad:

 

[callingcolleen1]

Its pouring now, just got back from shopping, had to change my cloths cause everything was wet. Temp is 42 degrees, well below seasonal average again. I'm trying not to be cranky, but every time I get a day off it rains! What's with that anyway?

Pond still looks great in spite of all the leaf litter that fell into pond last week. Most of the fish have gone south fishing, ha ha, they really went down to the lowest level of pond, temp dropped off because of all the rain.

Shot some pictures from the house window, it was raining lightly. Yellow flag iris is huge, drapes over the pond nicely.
Sweet flags in bottom pond, notice the spike leafs stay straight up were as yellow flag looks like unbrella.

 

[j.w]

So I must have the Sweet Flag Yellow iris then cuz mine shoot straight up:

 

[callingcolleen1]

JW that an iris not a sweet flag. Sometime the yellow flag iris will grow shorter in the full sun, mine is is the part sun and grows taller. alot of plants will grow taller in less sun. The sweet flag is not an iris and does not bloom at all like an iris. The blooms on the iris is much nicer than the sweet flag.

Your pond looks very nice by the way, that thanks for the picture
Still raining ....

 

[callingcolleen1]

I was thinking that my yellow flag Iris does seem much larger than others that I have seen in Medicine Hat, I'm thinking that perhaps because its not potted, the roots are more free to suck up more pond waste, and maybe because I never clean the pond, just the filters, maybe the pond has more "food" for the plant to suck up? All I know for sure is that yellow flag is the only sedge that's not potted up in soil in my pond, and it out grows everything else, maybe just "cutting it loose" from the pot was the trick!

 

[j.w]

Well how come my Iris doesn't curve over like yours does? I have Sweet Flag around my pond. It has little blue flowers on it but thought there was another name for my yellow iris that I didn't know about. So you have a yellow flag iris and I don't................now I'm confused. I always called it a flag iris till I thought....................oh never mind,lol!

 

[callingcolleen1]

To avoid confusion, lets NOT call the iris" by its nickname "yellow flag". The iris that I have is known as "Iris pseudacorus (true Latin name) (all plants have a true Latin name) Like apples, there are many types of irises. Some may look similar, but be very different. For instance, there is a "blue flag iris" which is really an Iris versicolor (true Latin name) the blue flag iris stems grow to 24 inches, whereas the "iris pseudacorus (yellow flag) can grow to four feet tall. You may have an iris pseudacorus (yellow flag) like mine, that may not grow as high as mine due to different planting and pond conditions, or you may have a totally different type of iris. I will feature my iris (iris pseudacorus) next week when it is blooming and tell you all about its origins and growing habits.
Like garden types of irises, water irises come from every corner of the world;

Japanese iris (I. Kaempferi)

English iris (iris pseudacorus) ... this is the type I have(Commonly know as "yellow flag")

North American iris (iris versicolor) (commonly known as "blue flag)

Siberian iris (iris siberica)

Middle eastern iris (Iris Laevigata)

Louisiana irises (I. Brevicaulis) and (I. Fulva) and (I. Hexagona) and (I. Giganticaerulea) and (I. Nelsonii) as listed by the American Iris Society

These are just some of the more common examples of water iris that may be found in your water garden.

JW, to know which iris you have exactly, you would have to look at the tag that it came with. The sweet flag that I mentioned before in my pond is not an iris at all, its Latin name is (Acorus calamus) and does not bloom at all like an iris, I believe you have a dwarf type in your bathtub pond called (acorus gramineus 'Ogon') "Sweet flags" are not related to "yellow flags", they just share a common sounding name. The sweet flag in my pond is not the dwarf type that you have in your bath tub, so it just looks like an iris from a distance or picture, but are two totally different plants, the sweet flag spear shaped leaf smells sweet and the iris spear shaped leaf does not.

Clear as mud now? Ha ha ha, I know it can be very confusing.

 

[j.w]

Ok think I got the blue eyed grass mixed up w/ the sweet flag...........yep the stuff in the tub is the sweet flag that I pinched a piece off of and it smelled like lotion. This is what I call Blue Eyed grass as it gets little bluish flowers and spreads like crazy:

 

[callingcolleen1]

I get lots of plants mixed up too, I only know lots about certain ones that I had for years, other plants in the garden I have forgotten the name. Very nice picture of the blue eyed grass, does it grow in water?