Our Pond

We have a pond. It was my husband's idea originally. He purchased one of those molded models with a moutain on the straighter back side. We got some castle bricks and created a garden to surround it, then filled with good dirt. There's the upper pond level, a lower level for flowers, and two small ground-level areas. In one of those is a tree/bush that has red leaves because he loves red-leaved trees and bushes. He also wanted a sundial, so that's in the other lower level with ground cover my son gave me. He's a genius with mechanical things, so he was able to hook up all the necessary water and electricity to make the whole thing work properly.

Then we filled with water and he studied up on how to stock some fish. Because the proper balance of fish-friendly chemicals was pretty much an unknown to us in the beginning, we bought those ten-for-a-dollar feeder fish so we wouldn't be out big bucks if we lost them. We lost eight of them in no time. Improved the water and we got ten more. I've lost the chronology of the (I think) four sets of fish we bought. The last set we bought at a different store and those ten ALL survived so it really does matter where you get them. In total over the first years we had seventeen. Even I became fascinated by them. I think that happened the second year when we still had two fish after the winter.

My husband got recommendations for wintering pond fish. He put in a bubbler which kept the pond from freezing completely solid. Then he built a cover to help keep out some of the cold and most of the snow. That first winter there was ten or twelve inches of ice that was still melting when we took the cover off the following spring. Like I said, those two fish were still there and welcomed spring hungry after their winter hibernation. I noticed they had grown bigger.

The next winter there were four extra gold-colored beauties to join the two old-timers. The seventeen eventually survived a couple winters. It's amazing to me how they've grown. We could tell which ones were the oldest because of their comparative sizes. Only one of those first two is still with us (I think the other got stuck in the motor for the fountain, so my hubbie fixed it to be fish-entering-proof). That guy is now eight- or ten-inches long! He started out this little feeder guy. Appears that they are some sort of koi, but who knows what you really get at the low price. He's (or she's? who knows?) orange and white and really a beauty.

Last summer tragedy struck when the hose inadvertently was left running. Those fish who survived were certainly hardy; those that didn't couln't take the chlorine content without the fish-friendly additives. But the eight we have are still going strong.