Up Close and Personal

This little guy has taken up residence in my front pond. He seems to think he owns the place and didn't even flinch when I began snapping his picture.

He spends a good part of his day swimming around. The orange underneath him is one of the goldfish that I moved from my back pond. It likes to nibble on the frog's back legs.


I've also discovered that we now have snails, a tiny toad and minnows that are barely visible with the naked eye. It will be interesting to see what happens with all of the minnows.






For the past two years, I have ordered Heritage Raspberry plants from Gurneys. Each year I have purchased 18 plants, and put them in the ground and babied them.

Lat year they all died within a month of being planted. I chalked it up to being too hot because they didn't arrive until the end of June. I just figured that they didn't have a chance to get established before the heat set in.

This year, however, I ordered extra early and they arrived in late March/early April. I planted them right away and lucked out with no late frosts. They took off and looked great.

However, Goliath and Chip laid on two of them. Bless their hearts. Snapped 'em right off at the base. I was hopeful that the roots were intact and they would send up another shoot. No such luck.

So I'm down to 16. Six just never really grow. They would get one little leaf and then it would shrivel and dry up. I thought perhaps they weren't getting enough water so I upped the water schedule. That didn't seem to matter.

Little by little, my number has dwindled until I am down to three plants. But, even though I only have three measly plants, I am pleased to announce that I harvested my first crop of berries. You wouldn't believe how long it took!




Next year I am going to order 100 plants. With any luck I should end up with at least a dozen berries then!









Now, if you'd like to talk about weeds ..... I am a champion grower. I weeded all of the gardens/flowers before we went to Vegas. You sure can't tell it now. I spent an hour tonight pulling grass out of the strawberry patch. Of course, I can't get grass to grow out front where I have planted it. I think maybe I'll plant strawberries instead and then I might actually have a lawn.

The back pond isn't even visible anymore .... between the weeds and the chocolate mint (which is nothing more than a weed that smells good). Who knows what is living back there?