Pond Life

A few weeks ago you might remember that Miss Five and Mr Two "helped" their father to reline and fill the pond in the garden. I intend to stock it with local Western pygmy perch to keep down the mosquito population - they also co-exist with frogs, which is important here. 

The advice was to leave the water to get rid of any nasties for 4-6 weeks which I did. Turns out this was not a great idea without first stocking it with plants because it was soon a glorious - I joke of course - green with an algae bloom the likes of which I've never seen before in a garden pond. So now I have started over with clean water and some water plants.  

The first of these plants is nardoo. 

This is a native water fern the spores of which when properly prepared were used by our First Nations people as part of their diet particularly in inland areas. The important part here is properly prepared because it can be toxic unless correctly treated. As I have no plans of growing enough to eat I'm not particularly concerned about this aspect. 

The other one so far is a water forget me not.

I'm not at all sure if this was a good choice as it may get to be too big but we shall see. Somewhat urgently now I need to make a visit to a local nursery that specialises in all things aquatic to invest in some water lilies and pygmy perch to prevent another algal disaster.

I thought the frog which has taken up residence in the pond might be unhappy about my disruption to his home but it seems I was worrying unnecessarily because he's out there making himself heard as I write and has been doing that pretty much all day.  "Hello, ladies," he's saying. "Come and make beautiful babies." Even if a female goes to investigate she's unlikely to mate and lay her eggs there because two quite small water plants are hardly going to be enough to provide suitable anchors for them.  He, though, remains optimistic. Good luck to him I say.