Plant Shopping Rewards Three Days of Hard Work

The morning was a little rainy, so we decided to take the day off from outdoor work. Larry caught up some computer work and I studied Spanish. As a treat, I went to the Longleaf Botanical Gardens annual plant sale, where I found four little longleaf pine seedlings and, for the filter, papyrus and flag iris. I also picked up a new species of Datura, an upright plant with big purple flowers. And I got a pot of a tall, purple-tinted elephant ear and one of Sanseveria.

My new plants went first into the nursery for the evening. Then I moved some to the biofilter.

With new plants to put in, I am eager to get back to the biofilter on the fish pond. We discovered that it has a couple of small leaks, but we have not yet seen where they are. We plan to empty the box and add two more layers of plastic liner, then fill it up with plants.

Yesterday evening, we put in the pots from our floating island that had overwintered. Then today, I put in the potted yellow flag iris and papyrus that I bought at the plant sale. With last fall’s prototype filter full of cattails sitting next to it, the filter began to take on the look we envision. Tomorrow, I think, will be the day it’s finished.

I will dismantle the prototype filter and transplant the cattails into baskets lined with coco fiber. I will separate the flag iris into at least two pots, and probably the papyrus, too. I will dig up all the cannas I can find and divvy them up. The pickerel weed is growing back in the pots with the rushes, and those three pots probably should be divided as well.

The A. incarnata milkweed seedling I found is tiny yet, but I may go ahead and move it. I collected a lot of its seeds last fall, but I took them all to Lillian and left them there. I will have to remember to bring them back when we go there next week. I’ll try to get my hands on some A. perennis, too. It will be great to see this thing blooming.

A sad note: I found eight dead minnows in the filter basket going into the pump. I guess they can’t tolerate that much pressure. It will either be survival of the fittest, meaning those that learn not to go too near the black hole gravity of the bottom drain, or maybe we can reduce the suction somehow. We could put screen material over the bottom drain if we could see it — but we can’t. Larry’s eager to swim to the bottom with a scuba mask, but I don’t think he wants to do it until the water is a lot clearer, and that’s what the filter is for.

Realistically, although I lament the deaths of the little fish, we have an overabundance of them. That’s why we’re getting ducks, to control the minnow population. Life is hard. Them’s the rules.

Three pots of rush and pickerel weed, one pot of nutgrass, a pot of flag iris and one of papyrus. Tomorrow, the cattails in the tray will go into the filter box.