Pondlife

[watervole]

Been spending some time pond-watching. I highly recommend a wildlife pond in
the garden to anyone feeling stressed. There's so much to see. Ours is
gradually going through phases as different things colonise it. The green algae
has all cleared now - the daphnea (water fleas) have pretty well eaten it all -
and you can see clear to the bottom.

Now, the daphnea are providing food in their turn for the damselfly larvae.
Ours seem to be a bit browner than the icon, but the distinctive tail is there.
It looks like three tiny feathers and is in fact their gills as well as an aid
to steering.

I'd been looking in the water for ages before I spotted the first one, a small
brown thing, about 1cm long camouflaged against the hessian inner liner. Once
I'd got my eye in, I could see them everywhere.

I'm still looking for dragonfly larvae as I'm pretty sure we'll have them too (I
saw the females laying eggs) but haven't spotted any yet. They look similar,
but not identical to the damselfly larvae. (a real expert could probably tell
you which of the numerous species it was, but I reckon I was doing pretty well
to recognise it at all!)

Comments

[grumpoldusenaut.livejournal.com]

So now you can see to the bottom, is there any evidence of goldfish?

Oh, and you should have had several emails today about Canada, including one volunteer.

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

About the only downside to our house is that the garden is too small for a pond.

*envies*

Gina

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Too small? You don't need that much space to attract damselflies.

Sacrifice the lawn.

Half our back lawn is now pond and we don't miss it at all.

We're never going to get ducks, as the pond is too small for that, but the smaller stuff is just as much fun.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Narry a sign of the goldfish (though it's just possible that he's lurking under a loose fold of hessian.

Hessian is very good to put as a layer on top of the pond liner as it's a good surface for plant roots to attach to. At least that's the hope - the plants are still too newly in to be established yet, but I have noticed a few seedlings on hessian near the edge (probably grass/weeds, but I shall probably let them grow)

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

The lawn is probably 7 feet by 14 feet (at its widest points, it's more of an ellipse than a rectangle) and then there's beds before the really high wall. So not sure how we could do a pond, but I'll think about it.

Gina

[watervole.livejournal.com]

That's bigger than our lawn was before we put the pond in. We've flower beds around the lawn/pond, but we're intending to gradually introduce native plants around the pond. We're only putting BRitish natives into the water. We found a garden firm on the web, Naturescape, that sells British plants mail order.

If you do decide to put a pond in, feel free to ask for tips.

Our pond snails are breeding already. There's lots of really tiny snails appeared all of a sudden.

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

I'll bear all that in mind. First though we need to get the garden into some sort of order to be going on with.

Thanks

Gina