Here is the pond yesterday.
Here is the pond today. Notice the difference? Yes, the cat tails are cut down. I can only do this when the pond is frozen and I thought with the warm up last week I had missed my window of opportunity. Well, its frozen solid again and covered so after I filled the bird feeders I cut off the cat tails then decided to cut the rest of the stalks as close as I could. Some of the leaves are frozen into the pond so it's not as cleaned up as I'd like it to be. It will have to do.
As a bit of background, this pond is supposed to be a rain garden. When it was graded the plan was that water coming off the roof from the scupper would go into it and soak into the ground. After the first rainfall, a down pour, it filled up and became a pond. Cat tails found their way there. Frogs found their way there so I've treated it as a pond ever since. Eventually the silt may increase to a point that it is a rain garden but for now the gold fish have multiplied and the frogs keep returning, and the cat tails need to be kept to a reasonable size.
The rainwater off the scupper is filling the pond. Can you see the ice underneath?
Birds have been devouring the suet. I put two blocks out on Tuesday and this is all that remains. They don't go through it this fast in the dead of winter. I wonder if something else is getting to it unseen in the night. Raccoons?
Here is the pond today. Notice the difference? Yes, the cat tails are cut down. I can only do this when the pond is frozen and I thought with the warm up last week I had missed my window of opportunity. Well, its frozen solid again and covered so after I filled the bird feeders I cut off the cat tails then decided to cut the rest of the stalks as close as I could. Some of the leaves are frozen into the pond so it's not as cleaned up as I'd like it to be. It will have to do.
This doe has made it a habit of late to stop by this one bird feeder to munch on some sunflower seeds. Food is scarce in the woods and fields, I guess. She had her two yearling offsprings with her but they scooted before I could get them on camera.
She didn't know quite what to make of me. She couldn't hear me but she could see me through my window.
My presence stopped her from eating then she ambled down the hill behind her into the glen.
There are some new shoots of skunk cabbage just showing down in the creek in the glen but I don't think that's on her list of likes. I will be spraying with Liquid Fence very soon as the shoots of the likes start showing. She will bypass my gardens when she gets a whiff of that scent and her yearlings will learn to do the same.
