Twenty days ago we had a lot of snow on the ground and the pond builder was lamenting the thick layer of ice on the upper pond. Since then, the temperatures have gone up and spring has arrived in Minnesota.
Along with the warmer temperatures, my pair of showas came in from GenkiKoi this week. As always they arrived in great shape and are now swimming around in quarantine with the little tosai. I’m looking forward to seeing how they develop over the next few years. They are about 16-17 inches long right now.
While I was spending the week in Virginia with a new grandchild and her sister, the pond builder opened up the lower pond. He moved a few of the koi out there to test the waters. This weekend the rest of the koi will move from the indoor pool to the lower pond. We plan to keep the new tosai in the garage pool this year to keep the filtration system seeded and running.
The upper pond is torn apart again to be reshaped slightly, a third bottom drain and installation of a wood decking around the perimeter. I’m hoping that my larger koi will be able to come back into this pond by July 4th. The entire collection can stay in the lower pond but more gallons per koi is always better. The koi in the lower pond have already forgotten to come to the edge for feeding.
It’s so nice to walk the yard and see all the new growth. The plants in Minnesota seem to grow overnight when the warmer weather arrives. Some of the plants that looked rather damaged from the winter might actually recover. Our first flowers in the spring tend to be magnolias since the deer and rabbits chew up all the tulips and crocuses. I did remember to cage up my columbine plants since that seems to be one of the seasonal delicacies.
Today I will be thinning out some of the dahlias and zinnias that I have started from seed. Obviously I have more plants than I need but I will be able to put random plants in different parts of the yard to see where they grow the best for next year.
Super excited to start putting some of the dahlia tubers into the ground. I’ll post some more photos at the end of the weekend – right now the yard is calling.
