2018 pond and garden

Late Summer around the koi ponds

Posted by lorivertin on

I’m playing catch up with the blog as usual. Much easier to just post some photos with captions. We were headed up to Michigan for wedding two weekends ago and it just happened to fall on the same weekend as the Michigan koi show. It was a lot of fun to see some of the koi crowd and meet new koi kichi types. The pond builder questioned whether I was heading to Michigan for the wedding or the koi show.

8.25.2018 The Michigan Koi and Pond Club Show, Milford, Michigan – we had a little rain in the morning.
8.24.2018 Friday night of the Michigan Pond and Koi Show – spending the evening with koi people. This is one of the nicest koi show that I have been to. It’s kind of like a social event. While it’s a little bit out of the way, well worth your time to attend. I finally met Bryan and Bae Bateman – both are judges, Bae does goldfish. There was a pretty large crowd from the Chicago area.
8.25.2018 Saturday morning before judging begins. Happy people, even in the rain.
happy snaps of the show – Ray Alexander (in the print shirt) and his wife Teri are also AKJA judges. Frank Wethington (far right) is from Louisville, KY and has the incredibly organized garage and pond support equipment…must be an engineer.
8.25.2018 – Troy Head of the Greater Louisville Koi and Goldfish Society and AKJA judge does a nice job of posting live on Facebook what’s happening at all the shows that he attends. He was the one who told me to try and make this show – great vibe, relaxed and a lot of very educated koi folks to learn from.
8.25.2018 Judging by Bryan Bateman and Dale Gingerich
8.25.2018 – super pretty doitsu showa entered in the show…even the pond builder who doesn’t like doitsu koi admired this one!
8.25.2018 – the asagi is always one of our favorite varieties and this one is really beautiful.
8.25.2018 NMZNA meeting on Saturday morning. This is my home ZNA club and I never make the meetings (usually held in Indiana). This year, the club’s koi show will be held in St. Louis. Lots of planning involved – I plan to volunteer wherever I might be needed.
More NMZNA members

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Work around the ponds never ends. Just small projects now. It’s hard to believe that summer is ending soon and we will have to start thinking about winterizing the equipment areas and starting up the indoor pool in the garage (which we did leave up all summer).

9.3.2018 Yesterday was a good day to go on the roof and take a few photos of the ponds. We changed the color of the footbridge to a dark black-brown. There are now 14 koi in the upper pond since the lower pond felt crowded. I moved another showa and kohaku. Both koi are 21+ inches.
Another view of the upper pond.
Lower pond from the roof.
The pathway to the upper pond will have to wait until next weekend. I’m thinking about removing some of the pea gravel and putting in dirt and thyme.
My moss growing project is back on again. I harvested moss from around the yard and placed them on the waterfall rocks.
The moss will grow on the liner material as well. I’m hoping that by next summer I will have moss that reaches the rock surface.
This garden is filling in nicely and I expect the hosta and grasses next year will be very full. I have Irish moss and regular moss growing under these plants.
Hoping I will throw them some Manda Fu 😂
9.3.2018 The pond builder decided to make a bakki shower using Rio media. I’m not sure if he’s 100% satisfied with the project so I’m betting we will see a different version next year.
Rio media stacked in three distinct layers. The media needed to be trimmed a bit which necessitated the purchase of a wet tile saw. These projects always seem to require the purchase of new tools. 😂
As we head into fall, here is a koi that I’ll be rehoming. Lavinia had something on one of the scales that I tended with iodine. She was the first kuchibeni koi that I bought two or three years ago. She has grown well but the red color on her is uneven in spots.

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Here are some random video clips of the upper and lower pond taken this weekend: