Fiat Pond

NDM's dream of a real koi pond have finally come to fruition. Four feet deep with a waterfall and a stream, the deed is done.
As many home improvements do, this one began with spray paint.
Here I am pretending to help dig the pond. In reality it turns out that I actually could have -- even four feet down there is nothing underneath the Saint Augustine grass but sand.
I liked the pond well enough as a simple quarry in our front yard, but we had to press on.
It took about two weeks from start to unlandscaped finish.
The top of the waterfall gives us a nice view over our HOA battlements.
Up close it still looks like a bit like construction zone, and it will clearly take us some time to naturalize in the pond's margins.
We have seven small koi in the pond right now. After a week acclimating they are just beginning to feel confident enough to show themselves.
The fantail makes it really obvious that these things are basically trumped-up goldfish.
So far we seem to have one day-blooming and one night-blooming pad. We'll see how many water plants we can stuff in there once the pond gets more established.

The Hammock's Last Hurrah

NDM managed to get a lot of good studying done in the hammock this year. A huge amount of studying if she was dreaming about zoo boards. But the hammock isn't just about work; it is also Líle's rocking magical licking cradle and puppy gas emporium.
Until next year, hammock!

Garden Miscellany

My final miscellany post of the day... Starting off with the first frog we've seen in our yard since moving here.
NDM's favorite squirrel, which helped us dispose of a pound of walnuts and hazelnuts that have been lingering on since winter. The little tree-rat showed absolutely no fear -- I think NDM took this photograph at a distance of about 2 feet.
The wife hasn't been as industrious as normal this year, what with studying for boards every waking moment, but she still managed to cast some concrete planters. This one was destined to be filled with opuntia and sedum.
Finally, I've given up posting photos of Molpe's garden kills. For a while it looked like they'd petered out with the arrival of the new puppy, but she's in fine form again. She's even done three in a single day now. I'm afraid if I keep documenting that it will eventually be used as evidence in a war crimes tribunal, so here's a picture of a cute, fuzzy, harmless kitten.

Unidentified Fungus

This weekend NDM discovered a mystery fungus in her native Illinois plant garden. A cursory Google failed to educate us...perhaps EJB has an idea what the heck this is?

(The answer ended up being stinkhorn,)

2008 Seedlings

It is that time of year again when my wife descends into seedling madness. The bulbs are flickering and humming down in the basement, paying tribute to those things she loves best. Like this proto-asparagus, which she is so attached to I doubt I will ever be permitted to eat it. I'm actually always amazed that she photographs things like this -- and don't think this is her only seedling portrait, not by a long shot!

We'll see how much of this stuff actually makes it out into the garden for our pets and wildlife to destroy.

Frog Flowers

I'm not a big fan of annuals -- I prefer paying for a plant once and having it around for a long time. Unless our bizarre weather kills it. Or a friendly dog digs it up or eats it. In any case, my relentless oppression prevents NDM from playing with many annuals. This year we have just one, on the back porch in a frog planter my parents gave us.

I must admit I'm warming to them a bit. These things are lasting forever, and it is nice to have some lingering color in the back yard. Plus the planter is apparently too sophisticated for Mag to consume its contents.

Shrooms

Something has pooped, died, or pooped and died in our front yard, giving rise to a thicket of substantial 'shrooms. NDM gets really excited about mushrooms so I had to take a picture. No, she won't let me eat one, even though they are clearly edible.

Dirt

Here are some photos of the final stages of the raised bed. A nice man came and took away a check for a lot of money, but filled our tarps with 2 yards of mulch and 2 yards of composted soil for the bed.
The bed wanted to eat about one and a quarter yards of dirt.
And eat it did, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow. Eventually I ditched the four-wheeled plastic monstrosity pictured here (NDM started using it to lug mulch around) and switched to a real wheelbarrow, and boy was I glad I did!
Finally, the bed had eaten all it could. Since then we've had a couple days of good rain to settle things in, soI probably have a few more wheelbarrows to top it off for winter. Then, no more yard work for the year! Yay!
Of course, if I find I need to top it off with even more dirt, Mag's trenching service has me covered.

Some Late Flowers

NDM put in some flowers in our front yard that bloom pretty late into the year. She presumably knows what these plants are.
I like them because they are pink and purple and last for evvver. She's also put in some colossal yellow flower spikes that also probably have a name.

Unidentified Spider

I noticed this really pretty yellow, white, and black spider in the bushes by our front door when my parents visited this weekend. It was neat enough that I broke out the real camera and the real macro lens, which I normally don't mess with. After I butchered some shots I made my dad lie on his back and take some good ones. Above is the spider's hood; the shot below is its undercarriage.
It appears to be the female of some species of Argiope orb web spider.

No Country For Old Men

This weekend the weather was finally brisk enough I had no viable excuse for not starting on a promised raised bed for NDM in the front yard. A quick trip to Home Depot for 6 8' cedar 1x6s, 2 8' cedar 4x4s, and a box of galvanized screws and there was nothing for it but to dig some holes.
My house was built entirely by unskilled labor, managed by someone who didn't speak the same languages as his workers, couldn't read and write English, and was off-site almost the entire time. What this means for raised beds is that I'm pretty likely to hit construction till immediately under the sod. I used a hand auger with a crowbar for leverage to drill the 4 corner postholes, and I've got to say it is a lot of fun to go through construction till with those tools. Luckily, I only hit an impassable slab of concrete with one post hole -- unluckily, it was the third one I was drilling, so by that point I was committed to its location.

Since I was already planning on using two additional supporting posts at the midpoints of the raised bed's long throw, so I just cut down the impeded corner post (8 subterranean inches instead of 13).
My steam gave out after major construction, but before I put in the two middle posts. With all the trouble my left shoulder has been giving me, I'm getting ready to start officially called it my trick shoulder -- and as expected the raised bed wasn't any help. I think back to when EJB and I threw together all that limestone tiering at my first house in a couple of hours in the rain and am just amazed at how old I am now.

Missouri Botanical Garden (Recommendation)

We visited the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis this weekend with EJB, his mother, and his daughter. It was a nice change of pace from the excellent Chicago Botanic Garden, and even held up acceptably to EJB's mother's marvelous private garden that I just posted about.
A non-vegetal highlight was a beautiful hanging Chihuly in the visitor's center at the garden's entrance.
In the line of plants, I really liked the asparagus fern (Asparagus densiflorus 'Myersii')...
The Peruvian golden shrimp plant (Pachystachys lutea), which I'd never seen before...
The king's spear asphodel (Asphodeline lutea), which had neat little fruits that yield a yellow dye...
This dramatic Amazonian elephant's ear (Alocasia x amazonica)...
A wonderful dense stand of bamboo... I really need to get some bamboo for our yard, but it is so expensive!
There were also many wonderful stones in the Chinese garden. The most dramatic were the Taihu stones. I'm not sure if these limestones always come from Lake Taihu, or just get that name because of their prevalence in that area. Maybe one day we'll get one of our own -- after we've got a nice thicket of bamboo going, of course...
I'm not sure what kind of stone this aggregate is. Maybe CRB will chime in with an answer? It is natural, but does share a lot of characteristics with concrete.
There was a really nice bridge in the Chinese garden...
The bridge to an island in the Japanese garden was also very picturesque, but closed to the public.
The waters around these gardens were full of koi and other carp. These were some of the largest such fish I have seen anywhere, and must be very old.

One Garden To Rule Them All

On the way back from our weekend trip, we stopped at EJB's mother's house. His mom has the most extraordinary private garden I have ever seen; these few pictures totally fail to do it justice.
There are lots of smaller plantings from the street front up to her house. Then her huge back yard is so riotous with interesting colors, textures, elevations, and smells that you just don't know which way to go to further appreciate its beauty.
One of the plants I enjoyed the most in her yard was this excellent ornamental asparagus, leaning a little more than usual due to our recent high winds.
She even has a few smaller accent gardens with various succulents. Many of those pictured here are in home-cast cement troughs.
There is even an old mulberry tree. Here we witness EJB's inevitable tree climbing ritual (although I shrunk the picture down so much that he just looks like some particularly strange branches). Unwilling to play the chump and pick fruit by hand, he's placed a tarp from his trunk under the tree and is jumping up and down to dislodge the mulberries. A quick spritz and it is time to eat!