Spent some time walking around the pond this morning. Things are looking good – especially after cleaning out the old leaves, spent flowers and some stray algae on Sunday. The wildlife is going crazy with the warmer nights we’ve been having. Lots of matin’ , reproducin’ and raising young. Very busy indeed. Here is the inevitable picture of the pond again – I am sorry I just can’t help myself. Things have been changing so much lately, what with the warmer temps.

Each day the water lilies are popping up pretty new flowers. A sea of pastels!

And my lotus has finally sent out it’s very first flower!

Wow!

Frog populations are exploding: I have at least 4 or 5 cricket frogs, one pictured below clicking away. I love teasing these guys: You can trick them into calling to you by clicking two rocks together. This makes the exact same clicking sound and it drives the frogs crazy with passion or competition – since it might just be a rival male frog! Soon they puff up and start calling back! Makes me smile every time.Tiny little fellas with amazingly loud sounds. Here’s a closeup:

The dozens of Rio Grande Leopard frogs are very content to lazily float around, much like us humans enjoy doing on a lake in the hot Texas sun on a balmy Sunday afternoon.Or hang out with our buds on the nearest rock. I have no idea where these guys stashed the brewskies.

The Cannas are making their first display of the season. I spent Sunday fertilizing all the plants. I hope that the spectacular show continues.This one in the bog is just stunning – never had an orange one before.

The other plants in the pond are coming along nicely. The Water poppy is sending out some lovely lime colored blooms.

Yup it’s getting warm and the activity is speeding up. Summer is on it’s way! Even the domesticated critters are already enjoying the shade:

Found this friendly little fella growing out of the rock by the pond this morning.  I continue to be inspired at how incredibly determined nature is in finding ways to bring life to seemingly barren places.

Last year the garden around the pond was non existent. When the pond was built it was the middle of August – not the kind of weather conducive to planting anything really due to extreme heat. Unless I wanted to spend most days watering the new plantings. And that’s not really what I had in mind. 🙂  So I waited till fall and planted most perennials tough enough to withstand any freezing days of winter.

Pond last August. No plantings in planting beds.

In early spring I did some mulching, composting and fertilizing and let nature do the rest. It’s really coming along nicely! We also seeded some Thunderturf (from the Native American Seed Company) in the front of the pond which consists of native Buffalo, Curly Mesquite and Blue Grama grasses. It needs much less water than any other kind of grass and doesn’t grow very tall at all.

Pond in early spring, plantings around the pond filling in slowly.

Please excuse the hose in the picture above. It was pond cleaning time and I was  filling the pond from our rainwater collection system. Pond cleaning was NOT fun this year. I had neglected it a bit over the winter and come spring it was just plain nasty. There was so much green string algae it was blocking up my filters every day and choking out the water lilies. It took us climbing into the pond and netting out huge clumps of the stuff and then sifting though all the algae to remove any hidden wildlife (tadpoles, damselfly and dragonfly larvae). I was making some headway but noticed that the string algae would just reappear within a day, so I went down to Hill Country Water Gardens  and asked them how to deal with it. They suggested a very cool product made of bacteria that would eat the string algae and any pond scum it fed off of. Within 2 weeks of treatment and some more diligent netting the pond is looking very good indeed! Water is clear and string algae is mostly gone. Whew!  Pond keepers call this the spring cleanup, and for a pond this size it it quite the job. Took us 4 days. I will not let the pond get into this shape again!

Now onto the plantings: In the picture below the southern part of the pond garden has some Mexican feather grass, pink and red Autumn Sage (the pink ones is not as drought and cold tolerant as the red ones) and Orange Globe Mallow.

They all took well to the location, particularly the Globe Mallow that continued to bloom right through fall and winter. The bees sure did appreciate that.

Mexcian feather grass is looking very good this time of year!

And Globe mallow has become one of my favorite plants for its drought and cold tolerance. And as a bonus wildlife loves it and the deer do not! 😀

Mealyblue sage took to the area very easily too. It reseeds like crazy in my front yard and this is a seedling I pulled out of there last year.

The ribbon grass has finally come out of dormancy and is growing well.

In the back of the pond I have some blackfoot daisy, which stands out nicely against the rocks with it’s white blooms.Kokopelli is keeping a good eye on the place.

How do you guys like this for a slanted horizon! Novice photography at its finest.

Gotta love that Mexican Feathergrass!!

My tropical water lilies have finally started poking their blooms out of the water. We had some unusually cold snaps here and there (one just last night!), but thankfully the water temp has not dropped too much. So they have kept pushing out their blooms. I love the dappled red and green leaves of this one. Makes a nice difference from the regular green ones of most hardy water lilies.

Nice view over the pond to the backyard garden from here. I just love late afternoons for the wonderful soft lighting effect. It is amazing how much life and interest a pond brings to the garden. Hmmm …. I wonder if this is the spot for a bench, or perhaps even a hammock?…. 😀

The hummingbirds have been particularly active since the arrived the end of March. First only one zoomed around the feeder and the sparsely blooming flowers gratefully refueling from it’s long voyage. And then suddenly we had four! They always seem so busy and active, madly flitting around, visiting flowers, and fighting over the coveted hummingbird feeder supremacy.

It took some serious patience getting these shots, since the lighting was really poor and hummingbirds move so darned fast! One has to be fast on that trigger finger! But I finally did get some – shoddy first timer work, but at least you can see it’s a hummingbird!! 😀

Here are some shots of the fighting that seems to go on all day long.  One hummingbird might be hanging out peacefully feeding……. ….and another one will zoom right up out of nowhere with a loud twittering sound and chase the Mr Peaceful away. I apologize for the crappy photo.

A standoff!And then other times they are just fine sharing the sweet bounty. Go figure..

Catching hummingbirds sipping from the Texas Betony was particularly challenging. Unfortunately this is the best this novice photographer could muster up. Can you spot the hummingbird below?

A cool closeup! Yippee!Ahh, I love those fierce little fliers.  And they are certainly helping me practice my photography skills!

Although we’ve had several very warm days in the 80’s, there have been several nights where the mercury crept below the frost mark. My trees, especially the Pomegranates, newly planted Monterey Oak and Mexican Buckeye shriveled up their freshly sprouted leaflets, and were left to grow new ones. Thankfully no tender stems or branches were affected.  On the other hand most of my perennials shook off the frost and did not care one bit. They just kept on blooming. Here are some pictures from the gardens right now.

The hardy water lily was the first to make an appearance this spring. I bet the warm water of the pond kept even it’s bloom protected during the cold nights.And what a splendid bloom it is! Like glowing sunshine rising out of the dark waters.

The irises in the bog are in full bloom. I just love the crisp green foliage with the deep purple.I just want to dive into that purple velvet!

Salvia Greggii and the Artemesia didn’t even notice the cold snap. It’s as if they were wondering what all the fuss was about.

And they definitely loved all that drenching rain we’ve been blessed with lately!

One of my favorites is Four-Nerve-Daisy – always ready to cheerfully greet you in the spring.

The cardinals have been particularly active in my garden, at the feeders and sprucing themselves up in the birdbath. Must be mating season. 😉

The local snail is making it’s way out of the Blackfoot daisy. Thankfully it did not eat the entire plant!

I was delighted to see my bluebird fledglings were still hanging around taking advantage of the field of insects. Here is one hanging out – it must have read the sign. 🙂

The Eight Spotted Foresters were doing the same thing the cardinals were getting ready to do! Quite shamelessly out in the open.With some restorative resting afterward.Yup, it sure is spring time here in Central Texas!