The pond dig has begun!

[j.w]

Oh no sissy you didn't cook up your pond fishies I hope...........poor Aggie and Bert

 

[sissy]

I think there would be to much to eat for just us .

 

[callingcolleen1]

Used to have this nosy neighbor who would complain that my precious poppies barked to much! Not sure what ever became of him, and I have not seen him around for quite some time.....

 

[j.w]

Oh no Colleen.........you didn't................. and did the doggies get a nice treat of some good bones one dark late night?

 

[callingcolleen1]

Puppies always lure me into giving them some treats, just have to look deep into the hypnotic Poppy eyes and I turn to jelly in her paws and give into her every whim. I think Poppy has secret stashes of bones hiding everywhere.... that or the big Yellow flag turned into a carnivoreous bog plant! He he

 

[CountryEscape]

You ladies are a hoot!!! Weather here still cannot make up it's mind. Going to be 40's today, then 50's next 3 days into the weekend. Someone said back down to 20's by Tuesday. :disappointed_anim:

 

[j.w]

Boo to the 20's CE, I'm loving our weather here right now and I don't say that too often! Yours will pick up soon and beat us by a mile in temps.

 

[CountryEscape]

Oh, I'm soooo excited this evening! I've been going out after dark, with my little mini LED flashlight, and spotting the koi, when they were not moving during the day. Today was a beautiful day, all the fish were swimming around. When I went out after dark, I spotted so many goldfish in the koi pond that didn't get caught last year and then I thought ... hmmm ... wonder if I could blind them with the light and catch them! Well, it worked superbly! Within less than 30 minutes, I caught all 10 of them!

I know these are pictures of the same fish, but I was so happy to get them all caught tonight. And, now I know how to catch fish when/if I need to do so in the future. May not work as well when the plants are all growing and the water is warmer, the fish are more alert, but it sure worked well tonight.
This is my opinion, but there are several I think are females. One is obvious, the largest one is very heavy. One of the black ones looks to be a female. The very speckled one and the white one with the red spot back in front of her tail and one of the solid red fish looks to be somewhat fat. The one with the red spot on it's head was a bugger to catch. Probably tried 5 times with that fish, he/she kept eluding me. He/she also has 2 red eyes! It is fun to look at the pics when they are close to see the specific markings. I keep these for later references.

 

[addy1]

Neat idea ce, maybe I will try that if I ever decide I need to catch one. They are darn fast

 

[callingcolleen1]

Good job CE! Nice catch of cute goldfish. I see you are getting into the spring spirit now that the weather is warmer. Very nice to have warm weather these days to walk my dogs too. On Tuesday my day off, it is supoosed to be in the 70's here! Going to get some much needed rest in the sun and play in my yard!

 

[CountryEscape]

Oh well, we went from 63 for a high yesterday, Colleen, to only 45 for today and tomorrow. Warming up to the 60's again by weekend, but the 20's the next couple of nights is going to suck .... AGAIN! Wish we would get a steady temperature, whatever it may be, and then only go up from there, but we sure can't seem to do that this year. I'm anxious for my pastures to start growing, new seeds to sprout and grow, but weather keeps holding it off. Soon .... I pray soon .... But yesterday was a beautiful sunny day.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Yes, we had a drop in temperature too, but not too bad, no freezing at night. We were lucky as they said we were supposed to get snow very early Sunday Morning, and that did not happen, so I count myself as lucky! Tired of the mud, things are just starting to dry up in my muddy back yard so maybe now I can walk out back again. Things don't drain very good here cause where I live the land by the creek has lots of clay content so we tend to have standing water for days sometimes even weeks in the ally!

 

[CountryEscape]

Yep, things are trying to dry up here, but there is so much moisture in the ground, it has no where to go but to drain away. My property is pretty level, so can't really drain off, but it's soaking in little by little. Not many standing puddles any more, thank goodness.
I'm still not sure if it rained yesterday or only early Sat. evening. Trying to figure out if I should expect 7 more Sundays of rain. LOL Maybe I should ask the groundhog?!

 

[CountryEscape]

This is what I got done on Saturday, when it was pretty chilly outside. I pulled up the water line that I had running on the outside edge of the waterfall ...

... then moved it to the inside wall instead, as there is liner under there from the waterfall to the pond and bog.

Then, I think I need to have the fountain line and shut off for that moved to the other side of the pond, as it will be easier to get to on the inside edge of the bog (and the plants will eventually hide it) than between the deck and pond). So, clear line is the fountain line, black line is where I will "T" off the pump to attach to the fountain line.

So, my son figured out that I should get a check valve to fit the 1.5" PVC line in the Skippy, rather than try to put it in-line on the flexible tubing, which was why I was confused trying to figure out how to add a "T", and the check valve, and still run the line to the fountain line and not go so far. Still not positive it will work with the number of feet of water line it will be pumping through, but I have a 4200 gph pump, so we shall see. The height of the waterfall is not that much, and the fountain line will be on the water surface.
He also suggested (as did Sissy) that I wrap the line before I put it under the ground and inside the wall, so going to buy some tube insulation to wrap the line with. I may get to keep the Skippy running all year YET!!! Probably not, but we sure are going to try to keep things from freezing up.
Oh, and I pulled 5 dead bullfrogs out of the Skippy. P.U.!!! One was humongous, body was larger than my hand, son said the legs would have been good eating. LOL Guess I'll have to wait for new ones to come this year now. Never had them in the Skippy before, so they tried something new and failed. Not sure if they died because of the freezing water (I assume) or if the Skippy went dry when the pump shut down from frozen lines. I had the check valve on top, so it should not have gone dry, so I suspect it froze too deep for them to survive. Still hoping the two I saw in the pond when I was refilling it are still down in the much and survived.
Also, heard frogs in my farm pond last night. Not sure what kind they were, not bullfrogs or peepers, something else. So, that's good news!!!

 

[sissy]

ce I will invent fishy sun glasses .