Flower Gardens

» Cottage_Garden - a little detour to garden ponds

One gardener's trash is ....another gardener's treasure! So true! And plant swaps either formal or informal can be a great way to expand the collection. Or get started again if you have moved to a new garden. It's a perfect way to find out what does especially well locally, too.

(Just watch out for those "spreaders" -- the ones that spread so nicely they become weedy.)

I am not usually squeamish but emptying a pond is a nasty job. I usually skipped it and let nature do the work. (That meant tolerating a bit of a mess until the temperatures stablized in the spring.)

It's funny how an improvised tool is so often just right for the job. I used to use a "special" butter knife for transplanting seedlings.

Your fish must be able to hide from the raccoons -- maybe in under those plants out in the middle of the pond. Guess that must thwart the heron, too. Oh well.

Selling your baby fish! How could you! LOL Trading for plants, now that's my kind of commerce!

OK I checked and your top summer high's are about where we just barely begin to count summer heat days. So I guess you have a true cool summer climate. No wonder you can grow some of the things you can grow that would utterly languish in, say, Virginia where winter might be equally mild but summer is so stinkin' hot and HUMID for SO long.

Golly. Gardening in a cool summer place is a whole different game. I was in Nova Scotia in midsummer a few years ago and nearly froze to death -- and the weather was GORGEOUS. And there were lupines everywhere and many delightful gardens. A bit like winter in Los Angeles, come to think of it. LOL

-- posted by Cottage_Garden