"When the bold branches
Bid farewell to rainbow leaves -
Welcome wool sweaters."
(B. Cybrill)On Tuesday, I heard a cold front was coming in and nighttime temps would be dropping to the 20's. So I decided I better get the fish moved on Wednesday before the pond iced over for the season. Of course, Wednesday was 38 degrees with strong NW winds and I about froze my hands off and today is calm, sunshine & a high of almost 50, go figure!
So at BJ's request this is how I do it. First I gather my tools...a net to scoop out as many leaves as possible (more on that later) and then to capture the fish, a pail to carry them to the garage in and an antique fish spear. Yes, you read that right...an antique fish spear. This is the best tool I have found for grabbing onto all the flower pots and crates that they stand on from the pond. Before I learned to use this tool...I would have to put on waders and wade into the COLD water to lift out plants from their perches before trimming them down and sinking the lillies to the deepest part to overwinter and then discard the annuals. This spear is also used to grab onto and lift off sheets of ice on the years I have ice before capturing all the fish.
Now onto the goldfish...if you remember
this post from last April, I put 43 fish into the pond this spring. In June, something got into the pond (we think a racoon since Ruger had one up the electric pole one morning) and soon we noticed fish missing. The 3 favorites I showed on the April post are all gone. I only have 19 original fish left. All the 12" ones are gone as well as all 7 fantails. I imagine it is because the bigger ones couldn't fit under the crates to hide and the fantails were much slower swimmers. I did have a batch of babies from this season and I am still working on catching as many of them as I can but so far only have about 6. More on why they are so hard to catch later but here is their new winter home...a 100 gallon stock tank in my garage. I still have to finish insulating around it and with the makeshift aeration pump it does not ice up except on the coldest nights. It is still amazing to me that they do not eat anything until spring when the water temp will finally be above 50 degrees. Who knew, fish go into a semi-hibernation state?
Now onto why the babies are so hard to capture. The garden and pond are surrounded by giant cottonwoods and guess where the majority of those leaves go? The babies burrow under the leaves at the bottom of the pond and are almost impossible to find! I'll keep trying until ice prevents me...running around with a net and telling those babies if they knew what was good for them they'd let me capture them hasn't helped so far.
It's hard to tell on this picture with the context of my little cabin and the pine tree showing in front of the photo but those cottonwoods are around 65-75 ft tall. I have a real love/hate relationship with these giants. They are so majestic looking and nothing is prettier than seeing them golden in the fall or covered with hoar frost in the winter. But, and that's a big BUT...those leaves all end up in my pond, everytime a stronger wind blows the lawn is covered with small branches and every June they produce a summer snowstorm of cotton flying down. The seedlings are one of the biggest weed problems I have in the summer garden and the cotton clinging to pots in the pond is one medium that string algae loves to grab onto. Let's not even talk about the mess of rotten leaves we clean out of the pond in the spring. But, then again that's where the kestrel's nest, tons of other birds are sighted, and the migrating monarch's cling too...yup, definitely a LOVE/hate realtionship!
If you look closely, or click to enlarge the photo of the cottonwoods look high in the trees just to the right of the pine. All those small black dots are these...I counted six crows.
In the other gardens
The marshmallows were toasted to perfection.
and I used both on one yummy smore...
it was such a gooey and guilty pleasure...
but sure was a great way to spend an afternoon. Autumn fires with smores...it's a good thing!
.JPG)
