Just when I thought it was pretty boring around the garden, the upper pond caught a deer. Our yard and pond nets have been covered with oak and maple leaves. I came back from a long weekend in Virginia and thought I saw something in the upper pond. I thought the pond builder had let a stray leaf bag blow over. The next day, our yard clean up crew came and cleaned up the yard leaves. In the afternoon I checked their work and noticed a few plants that I did not wrap had some deer damage. So irritating. I walked by the upper pond again intending to get the brown whatever out of the pond and saw that it had legs.

We think the deer may have slipped into the pond. The netting on top of the artificial boardwalk makes it very slippery. We’re thankful that we had the netting because it held the deer’s hooves and horns away from the pond edge. The last thing we want is a hole in our liner. We pulled out the deer with a friend of ours the next morning. Our city has a service that will pick up deer carcasses within 24 hours.

Since we cut away the remaining net from the pond edges I’m wondering if I need to put up some lights to discourage the deer. However, this is the first deer that has ever fallen into the pond and in a few weeks we should have a pretty strong layer of ice. The pond builder thinks the lights are unnecessary. I did notice a new garden visitor tonight – a semi-albino squirrel. We have a number of gray squirrels, red squirrels, rabbits, wild turkey that are in the yard at various times. There was an albino squirrel that lived two or three houses away that used to visit but I haven’t seen for two years. Maybe this is a relative?

On the koi front, we had some bad news this month. My azukari kohaku at Taniguchi farm did not make it to harvest. Early July, Hiroshima prefecture had some apocalyptic flooding. Over 200 people died and the damage to roads, buildings, train lines, etc., was widespread. My koi could have been a victim of flooding or maybe a predator but it could not be found this fall. Super sad face. Even more of a sad face because he may not have another inazuma pattern kohaku to replace this one. In the next week or two I will be offered a replacement koi. Not an auspicious start for me with azukari koi. Back in little Siberia, our koi are doing their usual swim around and eat routine. We have been looking at the water and it appears less clear than usual. We wondered if one of the koi had knocked a bottom drain pipe loose or maybe one of the bead filters is malfunctioning. On Black Friday, the pond builder went into the pool to check the fittings. The koi are always curious when he gets in and will swim very close to him. Everything looked good and our latest theory is that we have created greener water. We have the grow lights on more often and perhaps we’ve encouraged some algae growth in the water. Pond builder plans to install a UV light on one of the lines to see if that solves our less than crystal clear water issue.

I did another underwater video check of then koi. Everyone looks pretty good from top, side and under. While the video is kind of long and boring (5:03) – I watch it a few times to notice good and bad points of my koi. Only 4.5 months until we can get the koi back outside!

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