Ponds!

 

I have terrible pond envy! My son in law has been making a pond and I’m so excited for him as I know that it will bring him and his family such pleasure!

We left behind such a lovely pond when we moved…well we couldn’t take it with us, could we? 😂 It was beautiful and just how we wanted it to be. 

Within a few months of it ‘being born’, the wildlife came: frogs, toads, newts, grass snakes, dragonflies, damsel flies, you name it! The birds came to drink and every morning afternoon and evening, we would meet there for a drink and a catch up. It was one of the successes of lockdown. One morning, we sat quietly and watched a Firecrest drinking there and, one afternoon, we watched as a grass snake had a leisurely swim. Attracting the newts was a joyful moment too!

I also learned an awful lot about pond plants and started to have my favourites: Frogbit and Water Soldiers! 

We had to move because of my health and as Terry often says, ‘ We’ve had the pleasure of it, Sal, and we have the memories and the photos.’ 

When we moved here, a year ago, although we have a lovely, smaller garden, we didn’t really have the room for a larger pond and so I set to making a container pond in a small, raised area.

And not forgetting to add the fun features..as one does!

And it’s a lovely, little pond where William always enjoys popping a pebble or two into it and talking to Mr Toad (and not forgetting the frog) when he visits!

When we went to Toby’s reclamation, recently, I spotted an old enamel container …and no prizes for guessing what I’ve done with that….

And then, last week, I was contemplating buying another large tin bath to make a third container  pond. I’d stupidly left behind the tin bath I’d previously owned, when we moved. They aren’t cheap but I love to use anything old in the garden. And then I discovered that we had two very large containers that were sitting doing nothing! I hate plastic in a garden! 😱 but I thought I’d give it a go and see what I could do.

I’ve been gathering some more pond plants…the plants are sitting, temporarily, until I decide exactly how to position them…and also I need to think about how to hide as much of the plastic as I can. I might even revert to the tin bath idea! We shall see!

Meanwhile, yesterday, we went back to this little nursery…

What I like about it here, is that it’s more a nursery than a large garden centre. Plants are the priority!

It’s also a pleasant drive through the South Devon countryside.

It has a small coffee area…

We don’t usually stop for coffee when we are fairly close to home but, in this instance, we did, and right near to me, just outside the window, was this lovely fig tree…

The reason that I wanted to return to this nursery  was that they had loads of these, ‘Creeping Jenny’  (Lysimacchia nummularia) plants! They had also made up hanging baskets with these included and they looked really beautiful.

I wanted them to use as a pond ‘marginal’ and also to break up the black plastic. It’s not a true pond plant but it does happily scramble about in the shallows and over the edge. But the big plus about the plants that I picked up, was that there were roots all along the plants, so I can propagate my own plants too.

I hope that everyone is having a good weekend. We had a storm in the night and at one point it was directly above us; I woke with a start and almost shot out of bed as I thought something had exploded…scary stuff! We are bleary eyed today! 😱