We were hoping to open up our pond this weekend but real life interferes and things don’t always get delivered on time. The pond builder has been working very hard on tidying up the upper pond and the filtration equipment. We have a new container (from Polytank) for our moving bed filter and some new type of bulkheads (Living Water Solutions). More concrete was poured into the filtration house since the RDF was stacked just on concrete blocks and plywood last year. My job has been to apply some sealer to the cracks between the blocks that form the walls. We’ve been sweeping out the leaves and dirt that collect over the winter and put a few LED spotlights behind the RDF so that we can see the pipes more easily. Hopefully we will not really need to inspect the pipes that often.

Here’s a little tour of the work we finished inside the filter house:

I’ve spent most of my Saturday working outside. Mostly moving around plants and replanting grasses to hide the damage the rabbits have done. We moved another arctic willow bush to break up the view of the back door of the filter house. The pond builder also took some time to go purchase some new arborvitae – Thuja Green Emerald. We’re going to be planting them in the lilac line near our new lower pond to make a screen that will be green all year.

The koi have been doing fine except for the small shiro utsuris. I’m not sure if they are more stressed lately because everyone is hungry and they really have to fight for their food. Some of them were getting pinkish-red patches that would come and go. The koi dealers recommended doing a little salt into the pond. You add enough salt to get it to .3% which in our case was about two 40-pound bags. I think the koi are looking very good now.

Finally the chickens are growing very rapidly. They can fly a little bit and have figured out how to escape their cardboard brooder. I had to get a different type of wire for the top and place something heavy on it because they would try to fly against it. I have a bully hen – ChiChi. She always tries to edge Vida out and away from the food…and she loves to tip over the feed tray. She is much louder than Vida and will protest loudly whenever I separate them.

So another beautiful day is starting and we’ll be outside. The pond builder is at Home Depot or Menards picking up something (I feel we should get contractor licenses.) I’m working on moving around more plants. But first I’m going to have some Aleve with my breakfast 🙂