Pond and A Few Blooms

My water lilies that over wintered in the pond.  They are blooming a lot earlier this year.

So this is what the pond looks like now.  I am NEVER moving it again!

Foxglove.  One of my favorite flowers.

Delphinium.

Washington Adventure Begins

I went to a wedding in Washington state with my parents. We rented a house on Whidbey Island.
Goodbye Minnesota!

I was so tired. Our flight left at 6:20am and we got up at 4am to get ready, catch the shuttle from the hotel and get to the airport early. I think tired was the theme to the vacation - I'm not good with time changes, even small ones like 2 hours. You should have seen what the time change did to me when we went to New Zealand. Really messed up.

First view of the island.

It was a rainy day. We had 2 sunny days and 5 rainy days.

We took a ferry.

When we arrived on the island it was sunny! For a while.

We drove around a bit, because we were too early and couldn't check into our house. There was someone cleaning it.

View of Penn Cove.

Our house for the week. This was when the tide was out. When the tide came in it was almost up to the grass.

This heron fished every evening near the house. There were also seals that would show up in the evening and one night there was something large that surfaced not too far from the beach. It was attached to a buoy. The buoy bounced around for a while, then went farther and farther from shore and finally disappeared.

View from the deck. I took a lot of pictures from the deck. The sky changed so much, it amazed me. The sky doesn't change that much here, or rather I can't see very much of it - too many houses in the way.

Sun set on the first night. It never looked this way again.

My New Bridge

I finally installed the bridge over the pond last week.

I have been working on the bridge for the last month, varnishing it and sanding it.

It was a closeout kit that I bought and put together.

I also finally have the rocks the way I want them and the waterfall.

The fish went back into the pond last week too.

Last Fall there were the big original 8 and close to 100 of their babies.

Now there are 7 big ones and about 25 of various sizes.

I have been feeding them every other day.

Last year I fed them about 5 times the whole summer, because I thought they wouldn't reproduce as much if they didn't have extra food i.e. they would eat their young. Yuck.

But they had over 100 babies!

So, this year I will just feed them and see what happens. There is also a frog in the pond, but I could find him when I had my camera.

Of course, now that I am DONE with the pond it's started to leak.

Argh!

Anyone know an easy way to find a hole in a pond liner?

The water level drops down to about 5 inches below the edge, so I have some idea of where the leak is, but there is a lot of rock to move to find the hole.

Catty likes the bridge.

Bathing Chickens?

Yes! - You Can Bathe Your Chicken!

After a long cold winter, I gave the ladies a bath.

Use gentle baby shampoo and warm (not hot, chicken soup?) water.

Gently blow-dry the chickens' feathers dry or let them dry naturally.

Don't put your ladies back outside wet!

They can't keep warm with wet feathers!

Baths make chickens sleeply.....

Air dried tail feathers!

Ahhh - what a nice chicken spa day!