April 16, 2015

Well, spring has sprung and it is great to have such nice warm weather to work in!  The frog pond is now finished being dug.  I must confess that I dug out half of it by hand, then thought of my neighbor with the bucket on his skidloader, so I got him to finish it for me.  It is now about 3 feet deep all around with two plant shelves.  The last rain storm filled it completely, and it seems to be holding water (no liner).  Of course, I won't know for sure until we have a long, dry spell.  My husband is a science teacher, and his school was having a plant sale so we were able to buy a Brown turkey fig tree for $12 which we planted in the southwest.  This is to provide some shade for the pond to keep algae out of the water and I also intend to have a Japanese pedestal lantern beside it, along with a stone bench made with a flat stone dug out during our basement excavation.  I contemplated surrounding it with rock, but I think I have decided on liriope instead, as the rocks were sharp and I am hoping the liriope will filter out some of the water before it gets to the pond.  Right now, it is a little too muddy to put in my pump.  The pond was put in for a permaculture principle of attracting frogs to our gardens.  While I didn't want any fish, we are contemplating a couple of mosquito fish to keep the mosquito larvae down.  At this time in the garden, we are harvesting asparagus, lettuce, and onions.  We have six rows of potatoes planted and the strawberries are starting to have small strawberries on them.  We are working on the trellising of our raspberries, blackberries, and grape vines using cedar poles.