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?…. 😀