Cleaning the Pond

It was finally warm enough last weekend to tackle the yearly garden chore I dread most: cleaning the pond! It's an all day chore, but when it's done, it's so worth it!

I won't bore you with shots of the pond being cleaned, but rather, let you enjoy the beauty that occurs after.

I built the pond eight years ago to be used by the wildlife that visit our garden. I designed it with shallow pebbled areas for birds to bathe and deeper areas to sink water plants.

A biofilter waterfall helps aerate and circulate the water, as does a powerful pump and pre-filter.

Now for the cleaning. I started by pulling any weeds around the perimeter, and removing any dead plant materials left over from winter.

Next comes the testing of the pond pump, connecting it to the garden hose, and draining out all the old, stale water. The rushes need to be removed and trimmed, and the water lilies need to be divided.

Water lily rhizomes are buried in mesh pots filled with stones to weigh them down, and dirt that turns to virtual muck when waterlogged. The rhizomes themselves dye your hands a blackish-purple color, and the stain is hard to remove.

The next step is to get inside the nearly-drained pond and scoop out as much muck and black scum as possible. I carry buckets full of this matter to the compost heaps to recycle it. It's very smelly and slippery, and no matter how careful I am, I always end up covered from head to toe with it!

Next, I use the hose to spray the remaining nooks and crannies of the pond and surrounding pebbles and rocks to dislodge any remaining debris. Then I begin refilling with fresh water.

It's important to always leave some of the old water, with it's bacteria and bugs that thrive there. This helps keep the pond balanced, and inoculates the filtration system with a colony of helpful bacteria that actually help keep the pond clean.

I make sure the waterfall is draining completely back into the pond, and that water isn't leaking out from various area between the rocks. This is a common occurrence, as the pesky raccoons overturn the rocks at night, looking for little critters to eat.

When the pump is working, the waterfall is cascading, and the birds are drinking and bathing, it's a beautiful thing!

And here's how the pond looks and sounds after it's been cleaned and prepared for summer!

Cats & Tigers & Bears, Oh My!

This past weekend was unseasonably warm, so we decided to take a trip to Brookfield Zoo in Brookfield, Illinois (just outside Chicago). It's a superb zoo, beautifully landscaped, with many rare and fun animals to see!

We saw penguins...

Macaws and other tropical birds...

Baby Galapagos Tortoises...

American bison...

Black rhinos...

Giraffes...

and a meerkat family!

The dolphins like to peek into the office of their zookeepers...

And we saw the most playful tiger ever!

Her name is Whirl and she's 3 years old.

Check out the little video I did showing Whirl at play...

We stopped for ice cream and were visited by the

resident peacocks and peahens!

After watching Whirl play, we wanted to buy our cat Penny a new toy for her birthday, which was also this weekend. Fortunately, there is a pet gift shop at the zoo. For myself, I bought this new tin sign to add to my collection...

and this rock for my garden...

and this new fishy toy for Penny!

We told her it was from Whirl, her distant cousin.

She was impressed, and did her best Whirl imitation.

Penny tired herself out playing with her new toy.

She's 14 years old now, but still has the same spunk

she had when she was a kitten.

My New Sculpture Garden

Work crews have been tearing up our street for the past month, and lookie what they left for us this weekend! Modern art! There it sits, right in the middle of my former wildflower garden. Fortunately, we had just finished killing off the entire garden to prepare it for a new look. Looks like that isn't going to be happening anytime soon!

My curbs are gone, and chunks of clay, cement and stones are strewn throughout the grass. I guess that area will not be mowed for some time.

The major thoroughfare at the end of the block is being widened, and all adjacent streets are being torn up and used as staging areas. They are closing off our street permanently and making us a dead end. I guess we'll get a lovely new Dead End sign for our corner very soon!

These I-beams were on the lawn all last week.

So were these bags of cement and some long tube things.

I hope this means we'll be getting sewers at our end of the block... as you can see, we really need them! We are the lowest spot in the area, and our back yard and garage floods during heavy rains. The ground is almost solid clay. I guess this is what our street may have looked like back in 1873 when the house was built. I have to drive through this to get out of our driveway.

I peeked out the window one evening and saw this guy with a metal detector looking for treasures in the middle of the street. Hope he found something good!

Let's go around back, away from all the construction, to see what's going on in the garden...

The Wonder of Staffa asters are really pretty this time of year.

The bees are all over the mints and the hyssop.

The Butterfly Weed still looks pretty.

And the hydrangeas have faded to their soft, muted tones.

We now have Hummingbird Moths in our yard! I first saw them last year in downtown Chicago's Millennium Park. They are moths that, at first glance, look like hummingbirds because of the way they fly around the flowers, drinking nectar. I switched my camera over to the video mode and got a quick clip of the moth and a swallowtail butterfly on my butterfly bush! It's only a few seconds, but you can view it here:

All this week, I took advantage of the cooler weather by taking some walks around downtown Chicago on my lunch breaks. Here are some of the sights I enjoyed most:

Lurie Garden, Millennium Park, Chicago

Trump Tower and the Wrigley Building: Old & New

View along the Chicago River

Navy Pier

Now this is the kind of sculpture I wouldn't mind on my lawn!

Happy pigeons

One of the many cruise ships on the Chicago River & Lake Michigan

What have you been up to all summer?