Take Full Advantage of the Season

 

It’s December 2007.  Seems like it was December, 2006 just 12 months ago.  Now I understand what my parents meant when they used to say, “The older you get the faster time flies.”  Of course my philosophy is “The older you get, the more like your parents you become” and with Halloween being a little more than a month ago, that’s the most frightening thing I’ve experienced all season.  Everyone who has ever known my family has always said that I look like my father but I act like my mother.  I mention this because fall was the season that my mother would always start her spring cleaning.  No, it wasn’t because my siblings and I were so messy that it would take her that long to clean up behind us.  My mothers thinking was to do a through cleaning on the public rooms of the house, i.e. Living, Dining, Kitchen, Bath, and Front Porch.  (Front Porch, now there’s a dead give-away that I’m from the Midwest.) This would make sure that the main parts of the house were ready for the Holidays.  She would save all our bedrooms for true spring cleaning.  I later figured out the method to this madness.  1) Since we got all new toys at Christmas, by springtime she could get rid of all our older ones that we would no longer play with, and 2) Because there wasn’t as much too clean in the spring, she could dupe my father into painting the public rooms of the house while she rearranged the furniture. (Her way of having a new house every year.) 

 

I mention all this because with each passing year I find myself doing that more and more, particularly when it comes to my ponds.  I am finding that I am doing a major clean on my filters, streams and waterfalls in November and December.  (The public areas of the pond where the birds, frogs, and now field mice hang out.)  I can clear all the muck that has built up in the bottom of the filter and skimmer and use this in fertilizing all of my winter blooming plants and any new trees that I plant now.  I also use this time to check over my lilies and other water plants that may be susceptible to colder winter temps and move them to the lowest part of the pond.  I am still getting a few blooms but they just have to grow a little longer for them to reach the surface.

 

After this is all done, I super-colonize the filter with bacteria and barley straw.  Since it takes Barley Straw about 2 months to breakdown and start fighting with the algae,  I figure with the limited sunrise and colder water temps it will take twice as long to breakdown and take effect, somewhere around Late February to Early March.  Just about the time that the algae wants to start up anyway.  Do I have scientific research to back this up…No, but it seemed to work the last few years with my first pond so now I’m trying it on both this year.  I surmised that this should work ….Theoretically.  Then again, you can prove that elephants can fly…Theoretically.

 

When springtime rolls around I do the main pond clean-up (the bedrooms of the fish) and partial water change.  This is the best time to also get started fertilizing your lilies, but all of that is for another article.

 

It’s December, and with Thanksgiving just finished and Christmas coming up in a couple of weeks I want to say there are so many things to be thankful for.  First to GPPS, all the members and particularly all of last years officers for the wonderful job they have done this past year and next year’s new officers for the great job I know they are going to do. Second for my wife and our life together.  It still amazes me that she’s willing to put up with

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