2018 pond and garden – Life is better with a koi pond…

“there’s a deer in the pond….”

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…

Late Summer around the koi ponds

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…

Rotary Drum Filter blues

The pond builder was finally seeing the home stretch of this summer’s project. The pond had been filled with water and it was time to get all the equipment up and running. Unfortunately he saw that the RDF was leaking somewhere. He called Mike Swanson of Koi Acres to talk about options. Having Taylor weld…

Another Cute Budo Goromo

If you like your wine big, bold and red, chances are you want something made from the Nebbiolo grape. Earlier this week my newest koi, a budo goromo named Nebbiolo flew in from San Jose. Budo translates into grape. I’m hoping Nebbiolo will grow to be big and bold in the pond. This budo goromo…

Koi Pond Building is on a weather delay :-(

Weather in Minnesota this summer has been very unpredictable. Between the very loooong winter and ill-timed rain showers, we’ve lost a number of weekend days to work on the pond. I’m very hopeful though that the upper pond is on the home stretch. We have a few tasks left before the large koi can return:…

If it’s the weekend, we have probably been outside gardening or working on the pond…

I’m predicting that the large koi might be able to move into the large pond in three weeks – but that’s a big maybe. The best plans will often get derailed by weather, work and other things that happen. This weekend I finished another large gardening project. Gardening is important to me because I happen…

“keep an eye on me in case I pass out”

This is one of the amusing texts that I get from the pond builder. The last four weekends he has moved a lot of sand out of the upper pond, poured a lot of concrete, put in three new bottom drains, reshaped the pond walls to give us at least another 1000 gallons or more….

It’s finally hot in Minnesota

Busy three day weekend. It was fun to see all the koi kichi photos from the Louisville Koi Show and while it would have been nice to be there – I got a lot of gardening done. Almost all of the dahlias have sprouted and some plants in the yard seem to grow two inches…

Moving koi, pouring concrete and gardening

Great weekend weather and we played catch up – pond builder has a lot of energy – here are some photos:

Spring 2018 has finally arrived

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….