Henry and the Disco Ball

Mimi and I have a little pond in our back yard. It’s a little pond with huge benefits. Our 5 acre yard slowly but surely drains into the pond so our place is basically a bowl. I love gardening on a bowl. From the pond, our garden beds flow upwards giving the affect of great height as your eye wanders from the bottom to the top. Hillside planting allows for all of the layers to be visible even though the plants aren’t necessarily taller than the ones in front of them.

The pond gives a center to that flow and the reflections are the other half of our design especially at night when the lights come on. We have planted the best light up plants we could think of just for this. Some of the plants are single trunk trees like Loquat, Chinese Pistache, huge Oaks and some of the Japanese Maples. Some of our maples have multi-trunks and they light up beautifully along with some 15 year old Vitex trees. We have set up groupings of chalky white pottery around the gardens that are beautiful with lights on them. We have a disco ball hanging from an arbor across the pond in our view. I shined a light at the disco ball so when the wind blows we get a little light show which also dances on the pond.

Another reason I love having a little pond in our yard is the amount of bio-diversity that water and the plants associated with water bring into our world. The birds seem to love our back yard. It brings them everything they need. The Iris drifts along some edges of the pond have all kinds of life going on in them. We have a fish feeder set up on one end of the pond that feeds 3 times a day. Our fish population is getting healthy again which has brought in a Blue Herron named Henry, that we get to watch at feed time. After 12 years, he has figured out the fish feeder schedule. He perches on a tall pine branch in perfect view of the feeder. He gets there about 15 minutes before the feeder goes off. Mimi and I try to not be to close to where his shenanigans take place at feeding time. He doesn’t mind if we are in the yard at fly down time, just not on the same side of the pond.

We have watched him with binoculars for years. The process of his using his camouflage to get near enough to a quick swimming fish is amazing. I have seen him twitch his head feathers and sometimes his wing feathers to fool the fish with his reflection into reacting like fish do to shiny flashes. I think the flashes of the disco ball attracts fish in the late evening since he always fishes near the back yard disco. He is definitely a more successful hunter than I am. I don’t know if he gets a fish every day from our pond but it is pretty frequent that we get to watch him get a fish down that long, skinny throat. You would think he would go for a size fish that might fit a little easier but, no, he goes for the biggest bream he can get.

When the fish get caught the first thing they do is fan out their painful looking fins to protect themselves. It doesn’t slow Henry up a bit. He does, at least, turn the fish in the right direction so it’ll be easier to get down. He will spend 20 or 30 minutes working that big fish down his throat. You can pretty much see the entire shape of the fish as it gets choked down. We’ve seen a fish go down the wrong way and get stuck. Henry always pulls through in the end but it looks like a painful thing, survival of the fittest.

After I read ‘Where The Crawdads Sing’, Henry left a gift to all 4 of us. I wouldn’t have known what they were unless I had just read about the beautiful head feathers that Blue Herrons have when the guy was leaving gifts for the girl who lived in the woods. The book described the head feathers with such detail I knew what they were when i saw them. He had dropped four head feathers, long and curly and blue (grey). All four of us are hat wearers and I was able to give each of us a prize feather from our special friend to put in our hats.

Henry has learned to get along with our annual long-stay visitors. Every year a Canadian Goose couple and a Mallard couple use our little pond as a nesting site and ugly duckling swim lessons site. Some years the broods make it to the swim lessons part, some make it to the point of flying away but mostly, they don’t make it to that point. With our band of woods around us and our neighbors we also harbor biodiversity in the form of predators. We have a family of foxes living and thriving somewhere near us. I see them passing through a lot. I love having them around since they patrol the area for varmits, snakes and other such scallywags. Unfortunately, baby ducks are on the menu, survival of the fittest.

The Geese are like ornaments on the pond especially at this time while they are both acting broody since they are nesting they are way more quiet at this stage so as not to attract predators. I’m glad it is only two geese, any more would be too loud before they start nesting and they do tend to wander away from the sides of the pond searching for food. They have already de thatched my turf for me and they are working on getting it aerated which is very healthy for my grass. We seem to have a symbiotic relationship that works as long as they don’t start dropping little gifts for us like geese do on any of our seating areas we will get along just fine.

We have played around with pond dye. Pond dyes are normally used as vegetation control or can be used just to turn the pond a beautiful blue if you use a lite enough dose. The first time we used it was days before a big party at our place. Instead of going by the directions we decided to “eyeball” it. We poured dye in the pond and watched it spread out to cover the whole pond. Instead of waiting a day to see how blue it would get once it meshed with the water and particulates in the water we decided that we knew best and dumped another gallon of the dye in there. The next day the water was closer to black than blue. It was pretty for the party or it was at least interesting. A few people at the party wound up in the pond along with their kids. We had some Oompa Loompas walking around at our party that day, they got dyed. The dark color blocked the sunlight from penetrating the surface of the water which killed our aquatic plant life which eventually killed our fish population which made Henry and lots of other birds lose their faith in us until we got everything back in order.

It took us a year to restore what we lost but at least we are capable of learning our lessons. We used dye again for another party and went with the directions for way better results. Survival of the fittest. The pond is what we see when we look out of any window on the back side of the house. It doubles as a weather station, we can see how much the wind is blowing, it shows us when pop up rain is finished so we can head back into the yard after a quick rain. Nothing makes us happier than to see the rain drops on the pond, that rain water is sweet water to our plants. It’s not the same water that comes from our irrigation heads if you are on city water it will be full of Chlorine and Flourine and I don’t know what else. City water is great when you have to have it but I’m always relieved to see a big rain flush out some of those salts that can begin to build up in our soil.

We hooked up our irrigation to be run out of our pond so we are essentially fertilizing with a lite dose of the best organic fertilizers that can be used every time we irrigate. I have some of my spigots hooked up to pond water for watering in the flower and vegetable garden. I can smell it the day we irrigate and it has made a noticeable improvement in our plants slow and steady with the organic fertilizers, just like plants like it. When summer cranks up fully and my system is running it’s fun to watch the song birds start singing and flitting about while they follow my system from zone to zone catching a bath, eating some insects moving around from the irrigation water and generally having fun.

Our pond has provided us with so much, even some pets that can take care of themselves and a different group of plants that we otherwise would not have been able to add to our plant palette. We have a spillway on the back side of the pond that spills down to an area we are focusing on now. This shady area is challenging because it stays wet in the winter and spring months when the pond is overflowing then it dries out a bit in the summer and fall. We have begun adding Astilbe, Iris, Daylilies, Acorus, St. John’s Wart, Sumac, ferns, hardy Peonies and Hellebores. We are proud of ourselves this year we had all those plants available at Garden Works. I have been surprised at the number of people who have apparently been waiting for plants like these for the same purpose.

Our aquatic plant selection has grown to over forty varieties. I still have much to learn about that world and I’m diving in with both feet. Diving in is the best way for me to learn. I have found that advice from other gardeners is great but what works for one person may not

work for the next. Some people will say that a gardening thing can’t be done while we have been doing that very thing for years. I believe that if there is something you want to try in your gardening you should try it, within reason. We have disproved many gardening philosophies in this yard and other yards just through pure ignorance of someone else’s opinion (more likely passing on of misinformation) on the matter.

There are micro climates created all over your yard from anything from warm brick walls, north wind blocking fences, ravines and steep hillsides that change all the “rules” that gardeners allow in their process just because they heard it somewhere. I’m here to tell you that you may be pleasantly surprised at the results that come from trying out the things that you want to work in your yard. As gardeners our back yards may be our new best friend as travel gets more difficult and weird, as uncertainty in our world grows it feels good to be home sweet home. Get to know all of your yard and make it yours.