Plants and bugs would take over the world

I can't believe it's still only May and the grass is up to my knees in certain spots.  Unfortunately so are the stinging nettles and marsh marigolds.  'Weeds' are incredible.  And incredible frustrating and time consuming to deal with, if we need to remove them for some reason (usually because they are toxic to the animals, or taking over our food garden) So far at least I feel like we might have gotten a better handle on the deadly nightshade after constantly ripping it up for the past three years.  It really would be nice to be able to go barefoot in the grass, especially for G, he has hobbit feet that don't get hurt by things, but this is not a grassy field from a movie.  It's the wilds of Minnesota, and everything here can kill you, or at least make you feel rotten for a while, or hop around on one foot while swearing.

We live in a county that has a tick population that carries Lyme disease.  Luckily we mostly get wood ticks here, but they are such an annoyance, and cause allergic reactions in the horses. Several times a day I spend time searching them out and picking them off-I've even put Winston on Oakley's allergy meds to try to help him, but this morning I found him with a huge patch of hair rubbed off of his face where he scratched on the stall door all night.  Poor guy!!

Terry the wood tick on a spinach leaf in the greenhouse.
If we were in there working for more than a few minutes he would emerge and start waving his greedy little legs around. 

The horses haven't been drinking a lot of water lately, so it's encouraged me to order a well water testing kit from the county.  I realize they are getting a lot of water by eating grass all day, but I want to make sure there is nothing in the well that could be dangerous.  We are supposed to test yearly. Oops.


We are trying to start rice plants! The USDA gives out seed in very small quantities for research purposes and we were given two types to try.  This should be interesting...

My plants from Canada arrived finally, which is nice since many of my seeds have not started at all. I restarted many of them, some after soaking for 24 hours.  Unfortunately it was all done in a rush and I hadn't started keeping records yet, so I may make the same mistakes again next year.  That being said, it has been a very strange spring...It's been cold then hot then frost then hot then frost again! 

We had two ponds excavated over the last few weeks.  Quite an ordeal and an expensive one, but I know they will look great eventually.  Our current challenge is attempting to over seed the exposed soil when chickens and wild birds just eat all of the seed you put down (even Rocket, the wild pigeon stops in for a snack, so I bought him proper pigeon food and put it in his bowl by the garage in hopes that he'd eat that instead of our seed)

I attached drain hose to the downspout of the roof gutter so we could start filling a bit.  G covered as much of the exposed earth as he could with composted manure and some spoiled hay bales to help prevent erosion and drying out.

Pond two, out by the grotto, looking back towards the house.  It started to fill in all by itself despite not being deeply excavated.  It was seeping in from the adjacent flooded middle field.

Again, exposed earth over seeded and covered with spoiled hay.

Another shipment of trees arrived, so we planted with chooks help.

Winston would just like some silence so he can keep eating.

The ducks have been enjoying a few swims in the dirty clay water in pond one, but suddenly they stopped....

The pond was green. I mean REALLY green. These photos don't really capture it. We had a few aquatic plants in there already but what we needed was more water, and we thought we needed aeration but several pond experts have told us that would make it worse.

Brand new pond, lots of clay fines in suspension, looking as we expected, G adding duck weed. 

and then it started to turn to a sick unnatural lime colour, you can't really see it here well

The purplish floating bit that look like oil are likely some sort of iron bacteria

We went to a beautiful koi farm nearby....

WOW. WANT.

I really miss keeping fish!

I managed to find a pond plant supplier just south of us, and we spent a good chunk of change there since we didn't drop what we'd budgeted for an aeration system.  Glenn mostly sat in the chair in the greenhouse, petting the old labrador who was grateful for the attention.  Pretty soon G's eyes were glazed over from happiness (he really needs a dog) and also I think just being around the aquatic plants, the humidity in the greenhouse...reminded him of Vancouver Island.  His parents have a stunning backyard that is full of gorgeous plants and a koi pond (and now chickens!!) It's really an oasis in the middle of a quiet residential area of Esquimalt.  

We bought a few native plants, and a few that the USDA would consider invasive in other climates. Water hyacinth wreaks havoc in Florida apparently, but here the plant will be killed over winter, and our backyard pond isn't connected to the rest of the water ways here.  It's a beautiful plant, with the most amazing root structure that looks like the gills of an axolotl. It's job is to filter the water.  I also bought Pistia stratiotes because it's a great looking plant, but also to help shade the water a bit. It rapidly reproduces, just like the hyacinth.  Hopefully this will be enough to help get the algae under control.  If the water lettuce takes over too much of the pond and inhibits oxygen transfer, I'll just remove some.  That's the beauty of a closed system!  

***

So it's a few days after I started writing this, and we've decided to still go ahead and buy a pond aerator kit.  It will just be on the lower price end of things.  We can use it when we need it, and figure out for ourselves what works in the heat of summer.

That's it for now.  It's been raining all day and I need to go and check on the soggy sheep who are in a new rotation near the house with only a tree for shelter.  And hopefully the pond has been filling steadily and will look a little better...