I’ve been a little behind in blogging and so many things have happened in the last two weeks. I was on holiday in beautiful Lake Louise, Canada when I had a little accident on a trail ride. I ended up in the Banff emergency room with a 15 cm laceration on my lower leg and 29 stitches. Once I returned to the United States, it’s been a few trips to the doctor, a short hospitalization and in two weeks they will decide if a skin graft will be done to close my rather large open wound. One of the hardest things about my injury is that I have not been able to see my large koi pond side. I’m anticipating that in a few days I will be able to hobble up the path to see them. In the mean time, I can see them a little from my bedroom window.

Last weekend was the Upper Midwest Koi Club’s Annual Koi Show. UMKC is my local club and I’m currently the secretary for the club. It’s fun to have a network of koi people to do all things koi. All very nice and very helpful. Since my husband had a broken rib and I was unable to help him with my leg injury, another koi club member came out and helped the pond digger bag up the koi for the show. This year we took Irene (showa), Lone Ranger (ki utsuri), Carmen (goshiki), Billy the Kid (shiro utsuri tosai), Luigi (mukashi ogon tosai), August (ochiba tosai), Lemonade (hariwake), Chuck Norris (kohaku tosai), Chip (sanke tosai) and Velma (sanke tosai).

In addition to the koi in my pond, I purchased some koi at the show from two vendors. This year we had new show rules and koi, size 1-3, could be purchased and exhibited in the vendor tank. So I bought a lovely kohaku from Koi Acres and named her Akachan…and I purchased two koi from Southwest Koi, to be named. Here’s a video clip of all of my entries: I’m very happy to report that some of my koi won awards. Billy the Kid, an omosako shiro tosai sourced from GenkiNishikigoi (Kevin Pham) won Baby Champion B.

Akachan, the kohaku that I had purchased from Koi Acres at the show took Best in Size 2. We were hoping for Baby Champion A but Michael Chang had a kohaku that beat her.

Luigi, the mukashi ogon won best in variety. Lone Ranger won best in variety, utsuri and the MPKS friendship award. Irene won the AKJA judges award. I received some nice plaques for the friendship awards and the koi awards are banners. The Baby Champion B flag will come in a few weeks with my koi photo on the flag.

So we’ll be getting back to normal over the next few weeks. I’ll have to film and name my new koi, they are in quarantine right now. We’re going to be giving some of our koi to a friend to thin down the group. The next long term project is building a hoop house over the big pond for winter. We’re also fiddling with the auto feeder, mixed results…

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