Topics

1

Pond Chat / Hey everyone! Happy news, sad news

« on: April 12, 2014, 02:26:18 PM »

The good news is that we've finally completed our move from Il to NC. The bad news is that (because of the time frame) I left EVERYTHING at the old pond. All my lilies, lotuses, dwarf lilies, several varieties of horsetail, marestail variegated sweet flag... everything. I have a whole new canvas of plants to learn about, and will have to scope out the pond scene here. Maybe go with something small. Don't know if these pics will show, but this is what I left behind:

http://www.pbase.com/karenfrogpond/image/19756950    <p>http://www.pbase.com/karenfrogpond/image/19756950 :</p>





The buyers said "Oh our dog will love playing in there!"     Life goes on. On the plus side, I found extensive parrot feather in a ditch and giant pennywort by the river. Locals call them weeds--- I paid a fortune for them up north. 

2

Pond Chat / Running water... :)

« on: March 14, 2011, 08:19:40 AM »

Yesterday my hubby was able to get a pump in the pond (with a broken hand to boot) and get the skimmer & TT up and running. It had been non-operational since mid-December. There is still quite a bit of ice on the pond, cant see the fish yet. But we noticed immediately that the birds and critters came back to the stream and haven't left since.

We'll have a massive cleaning this spring and we ain't no spring chickens anymore. There is a lot of creaking in the bones lately.

3

Pond Chat / A question for VICKIE

« on: November 07, 2010, 09:20:04 AM »

I was reading the topic about pitcher plants, and noticed your signature picture. I was wondering if you had a larger picture of that lily? I had something similar happen to one of mine:



I was also wondering if it was the same cultivar, and how often that happened to yours?

4

Chit Chat / Turbo Entabulator (funny video)

« on: July 24, 2010, 10:25:54 AM »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_F-nLZrXcQ

This is a description of the video:

Several years ago, Rockwell International decided to get
into the heavy duty transmission business. They were getting
ready to tape their first introduction video. As a warm up,
the professional narrator began what has become a legend
within the trucking industry.

This man should have won an academy award for his stellar
performance. Now remember this is strictly off the cuff,
nothing is written down. You ought to enjoy this once in a
lifetime performance from this gentleman.

5

Terrestrial Gardening / Gooseneck Loosestrife from Cathy

« on: June 29, 2010, 08:30:40 AM »

A few years ago I traded Cathy for this plant. The only thing I could grow under this bird feeder was weeds and grass.
Now, I get no weeds or grass and you can see that it has almost entirely engulfed this bed.
Thanks, Cathy!

6

Chit Chat / American Ponders Helped Me Find My Ancestors! (Finally something NOT a scam!)

« on: June 24, 2010, 08:06:27 PM »

This is soooo cool!

We checked our email the other day and discovered a message from someone who was searching for their ancestors. As it turns out, they found this thread from 2006:
http://www.americanponders.com/forum/index.php?topic=249.msg2336#msg2336

More specifically, this post by me:
http://www.americanponders.com/forum/index.php?topic=249.msg2336#msg2336:

Interesting. I love reading about everyone's ancestry. I have often wondered about the "six degrees of separation" theory and how it may relate to the folks here on the forum. Maybe some of us are even distantly related and don't even know it.  Cool

Krista, my hubby's father was an accomplished organist as well, and was taught by a famous person who used to play at St Paul's in London, and then his father or brother made Jenn pianos. We'd like to research that side of the family more. I would love the opprotunity to go to England and visit cemetaries and churches. Someday! Kevin's mother's side is interesting, her tree goes back hundreds of years.

My brother has done an amazing amount of research on my ancestry. He's been to England several times, and finally got to go to East Germany after the wall came down. He hit a dead end in Gotha, 1844. So if anyone knows anyone related to Johann Drescher or Marth Weibezahl just give us a ring!
As far as the English side goes, there are lots of pretty common names- like Brown, Bulmer, Wilkinson, Hyde, Allen, Dunne, Hall, Clark, Hind, Palmer, Mowbray, Fitzgerald, Fenton, Lloyd, and Jenn.

Actually, he played at "All Hallows", not St Paul's.

2006! We are so tickled. Kevin re-subscribed to Ancestry.com to hopefully get more information. We'd been unsuccessful there before, but due to the help of this new connection we discovered a wealth of information. We were able to get several generations back. We've been able to go back to approximately 1735- 1803 with a great deal of accuracy.

The thing is, maybe we could have done it with Ancestry.com.... maybe not. What we really needed was a real HUMAN connection. And believe it or not, it was through American Ponders!!!!!

So happy and Sooo endlessly grateful to Jerry and Sean. It's a tough time for all of us, but this is a shining light of happiness amidst economic doom. Thanks!

7

Pond Chat / Thinking of adding minerals to water lily dirt.

« on: April 22, 2010, 05:56:28 PM »

Everyone over the years develops their own favorite water lily dirt recipe. But I was reading an old ACRES publication (it's a mag about farming) about farmer's efforts to add back minerals to depleted soils to improve the nutritional qualities of vegetables, pastures, etc. There is a lot more to fertilizer than nitrogen, potassium, and potash.

Many of the more expensive aquatic fertilizers have micronutrients that try and mimic the natural mineral content of "not depleted" soils.

Magnesium, calcium, halite (sodium chloride), sulphur, iron, phosphorus, manganese, iodine, zinc, etc are only some of the minerals that exist in soils and salts.

Minerals come from broken down rocks. So I was thinking that maybe adding a cheap bag of gravel to my water lily soil recipe. What do you think? When I wash a bag of gravel, all of the gunk that washes away is actually the broken down minerals from the rocks. I was treating it as a waste product and washing it away instead of recognizing the value of it.

I was also thinking about adding a few bags to my vegetable garden.

8

Chit Chat / Cat Pics

« on: April 18, 2010, 11:31:47 AM »

I'm having a really hard time getting these pics right. My PC is misbehaving, the server is slow, and I can't get the right format so they'll show up here. Now, the feral cat thread won't even let me view it. A perfect storm.


So lets try a new thread. Wish me luck!

The mom:

9

Chit Chat / Feral Cats = New Kittens!?

« on: April 14, 2010, 08:12:39 PM »

We have a ton of feral cats in our neighborhood. Last year (winter) there were a pair that took up residence under out deck. I suspect they ousted the resident groundhog.

Come May, and one has gone away and the other showed up with two little kittens.

Here we are in April, the mother has gone and the one kitten (we call her "pink nose"), now one year old, had 4 babies in our window well on Palm Sunday.

I've been feeding the mom (all meat scraps, raw meat, bones, liver ). We still feed the other one ("dirty nose"), but that one doesn't come around as much.
Pink Nose has 4 mouths to feed.

So what I want to do is bring the mother in to the "spay and stay" program; ie we pay for the spay and shots, then the cat gets to come back to our property to live out her life (kitten free). She's very skittish and wont let us pet her. However, we haven't had any mice in the house... none! 

The kittens are adoptable and socializable (is that a word?). We would have to handle them enough as kittens, then they'd be relinquished to Save-A-Pet to be cared for and adopted.

My kids want to adopt them ALL. Four cats is too many cats! But my kids are totally smitten... What to do? They are really cute kittens! They opened their eyes a week ago today.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

10

Chit Chat / Send a holiday card to a soldier

« on: December 01, 2009, 08:47:29 AM »

Send a card to a soldier through the Red Cross:

http://redcrosschat.org/2009/10/27/holiday-mail-for-heroes-2/

Verified by Snopes to be legit: http://www.snopes.com/politics/christmas/soldiercards.asp

But keep in mind that the deadline is December 7.

11

Chit Chat / Any Yankees Fans Here?

« on: November 04, 2009, 09:14:22 PM »

 

They just had to win. Yay!!!  (...tears of joy...  ).

12

Chit Chat / Save the Sea Kittens (updated)

« on: January 23, 2009, 09:53:17 AM »

In keeping with the current crop of Cat threads, I thought I'd post this little gem. The Peta folks don't want people to go fishing, or eat fish anymore. So they've decided to re-name the fish to make them seem more "adorable".

Enjoy. http://www.peta.org/sea_kittens/index.asp

We're having sea kittens for dinner tonight, I hope the kids don't get too traumatized. 

Edit/update- Here is an NPR story about it:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99249669

13

Chit Chat / U.S.Airways ignores need for survivor counseling

« on: January 23, 2009, 09:39:24 AM »

Hope you get a chuckle from this.

14

Chit Chat / Two stupid quotes to make you smile

« on: December 10, 2008, 11:24:51 AM »

"Of course milk comes from cows, but cheese comes from people" -Kraft cheese commercial

"Today is September 6- just a couple days before September 8."  -Matt Lauer


Anybody else have any?

15

Chit Chat / My new little friend

« on: October 16, 2008, 09:02:25 AM »

I think the groundhog that lived here for years must have died, and this is the baby. A couple weeks ago it was a tiny little thing, but has been working hard to fatten up for the winter.
This one is much less timid than the other one. We love to feed him/her carrots, and it sits there looking at us, munching away. My veggie garden has been pretty much wiped out. 

Isn't it the cutest? I wish I knew whether it was a him or a her, my kids want to give it a name.

16

Chit Chat / 401K retirement plan

« on: October 02, 2008, 08:52:42 AM »

RETIREMENT PLAN

 

If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in Delta Airlines one year ago, you would have $49.00 today. 
If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in AIG one year ago, you would have $33.00 today. 
If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in Lehman Brothers one year ago, you would have $0.00 today. 

But, if you had purchased $1,000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the aluminum cans for the recycling refund, you will have received  $214.00.  Based on the above, the best current investment plan is to drink heavily & recycle. It is called the 401-Keg. 

17

Chit Chat / Amazing carrot Clarinet video and Clarinet questions (Hey Reedman!)

« on: August 29, 2008, 08:55:40 AM »

My daughter has chosen to play the Clarinet in her school Band.  So of course, I searched YouTube for examples she can listen to and get a feel for the sound. I found this AMAZING video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWbj7FYEi3M
The Description:

Linsey Pollak drills out a carrot and turns it into a clarinet and plays it, live looping with a Boss RC20 to record 3 layers....from his solo show "Making Jam"

Stay with it. In the beginning the man is drilling holes into a carrot... but what he does with it afterwards is fantastic.

Does anyone else play Clarinet here? I know Reedman does. I've got this old Clarinet that I used in High School, but it hasn't seen any use or care for almost 25 years. Can it be fixed? The overhaul "starts" at 200.00, but I don't know what the Clarinet is worth. Might I do better just renting or buying a new one? Gah.
I mean, I know that all the seals are replaced and all that, but what if the wood is cracked and all dried out?

I think Laura will do great in band, I just don't want to start her off with a piece of junk.

18

Chit Chat / My little girl is in NYC!

« on: July 31, 2008, 10:37:33 AM »

I haven't been around much lately, we've been busy getting Laura ready for her Girl Scout trip to NY. She left Tuesday evening and is now in NYC.  :'( I am such a worry wart thinking about her taking the trains, the subway, walking the streets... so much could happen.
However, I saw her (& her group) this morning on the Today show  and they all looked happy, waving to the camera. Made me feel a lot better.

Here are some pix right before she left. The look on her face says "MOM would you STOP taking PIX!! You're embarrassing me!" 







There goes the train with my little girl on it.  They took this train into Chicago where they picked up the Amtrak train to NY.
I'll be glad when she's back home, safe & sound. I'm proud of them, though. They all worked very hard to raise the money for this trip.
 

19

Pond Chat / Turtle & underwater fish pics (new camera)

« on: July 07, 2008, 07:55:11 AM »

I finally caught the volunteer turtle and was able to snap a few pics before putting it back in the pond.







And we got a new camera (Olympus Stylus 850SW) that is supposed to be waterproof up to 9.8'.
It took a true leap of faith to plunge the thing into water. From the picture quality, it looks like I need some practice taking underwater pics.  Oh, and they don't listen to you when you tell 'em to stay still and say cheese. 
First is the Bluegill, the rest are Goldfish.













Finally, we went strawberry picking yesterday, so this is a pic of Kevin & Laura taken with the 850 without any polarizing lens. Not too bad, but I don't think it captured the true blueness of the sky. Overall I am very happy with this camera. It fits into a pocket.

20

Pond Chat / 20 year ponding anniversary present

« on: June 24, 2008, 09:36:29 AM »

Wow, in 20 years of ponding I have never experienced this. Goes to show there's always something to look forward to when you go visit the pond.

I was looking at my little Swamp pond, wanting to pull out some Frogbit. It grows so much it will take over everything. That was when I noticed the Frog Eggs. So I look at the eggs, then notice the holes in the leaves. Either I've got some big snails, or that is not snail damage.
Then I found him.   In 20 years I've never had a volunteer visitor like this.



Can you see him?




Tossing in some more pics. I'm in love with the Marestail this year, it's crowding out everything else. 



In the big pond, Mayla is blooming non stop



So, I think it's a little Painted turtle. It's about the size of a silver dollar. I want to catch him and take a couple of decent photos, but he's pretty quick in the water! I hope he doesn't get eaten.
 

21

Chit Chat / For Mikey... 1986 gas prices in San Diego

« on: June 12, 2008, 09:04:57 PM »

My daughter was lamenting that she was not 'fashionable', so I decided to dig out childhood pics of me wearing home made polyester suits. Never did find those pics (probably burned them), but I did find this pic from my 1986 trip to San Diego.



I think the reason I took this pic was because I thought it was funny that a gas station would be selling smog for ten bucks.    But look at those prices!!! 

That was when my brother was stationed (deployed, most of the time) on the Kitty Hawk CV-63. We got to eat in the Officer's Mess, and have a tour of the ship.

But wow, don't ya just wish???!!!

Edit: Notice, if you will, that the cost of a gallon of gas is 5 cents more per gallon if you use credit.  Ha!

22

Pond Chat / A sea of Red from named to unnamed

« on: June 10, 2008, 06:00:03 PM »

Yet again, my Water Lily tagging system has failed, leaving me with a bunch of "Previously Named" Water Lilies. 
This is my upper pond-





I don't know how I'm ever going to sort them out. Reds are hard! I know I have Gloriosa, Ellisiana, Sultan, Rose Arey, etc. Maybe even an Attraction.
Note to the wise: Don't put all your reds in one basket. 

On a more positive note, I saw a Baltimore Oriole today!
(lousy pic, 10x zoom through the window)-



And, I finally found the secret to growing Marestail. It dies in my nice big, filtered, clean pond. In my swamp pond, it thrives.
Last year-


This year-


No polarizing lens on that one, sorry.

Honestly, don't know what I'm going to do about those lilies. Maybe a hot June day sitting outside with Iced Tea, Slocum & Robinson will help me sort it all out.

23

Chit Chat / Death of a tree, and new Racoon life.

« on: May 30, 2008, 07:59:07 PM »

A BIG Oak tree came down during a storm today, had to be at least 40' tall and a large circumference. Probably at least a 50 year old tree. Here are some pics. After surveying the damage I found an extra special surprise... scroll down.





The inside of the tree was rotted (heart rot) up to about 20 feet up-



The tree took down a couple of other trees on the way: Buckthorn, part of a Maple, and this Chokecherry.



A little closer-



 When we were out inspecting the damage, we found this:



Two baby raccoons! About 3 feet from the tree. They are so tiny, no bigger than 1 1/2 lbs each. I wonder if they were nesting in the tree and got displaced?  Maybe (hopefully) the Mom was scoping out a new site after the tree fell. I went out there after some time, and there was only one left. I'll go out there again to check. I hope Mom does not abandon the final one, but if she does we're up for the task.
The pic is pretty blurry, cuz I didn't want to get to close.

24

Pond Chat / Bluegill

« on: May 22, 2008, 10:39:59 AM »

I was finally able to get a pic of my little Bluegill. I think she's a sweetie. She hovers in the water, twirling her pectoral fins this way and that, yet seems motionless.
My son and I feed her worms, and I think she's beginning to like us. Edit: Sorry about all that floating debris, it's a breezy day here and there are dandelion seeds, pollen, petals, etc flying everywhere. It's like snow!



She's not colorful, and doesn't have interesting patterns like Koi and Goldfish, but she does have interesting markings when viewed from the side. My neighbor has an extremely large aquarium for turtles, and the Bluegills are beautiful.

You can eat 'em, too. 

25

Pond Chat / Finally up and running!

« on: May 12, 2008, 12:01:43 PM »

We finally got some good weather over the weekend, so we got it all cleaned up and fired up the old Sequence. 
I hope this isn't too many pics to put here, I was just camera happy! More like "overjoyed" that I finally got around to this mess. Oh, and I had a little helper.

Before-





My little helper  -





Yay! Done-





OK, now that that's done we're on to the next project. We decided that the walls of our mechanical filter box were getting pushed in too much by the soil, and the brushes no longer fit inside correctly. So, we've dug it up and need to find some way of reinforcing the wall.



This next picture shows the walls of the filter box bowing out since we excavated all the dirt around it. You can see how the brushes don't fit right. Once we get material for reinforcement, we'll have to drain this out and get the walls right. 



It's a mess, but it's an organized mess!



My better half, thinking  -



First bloom of the year. Have you ever seen such a poor pic of Joey Tomocik? I'm not complaining, the poor thing had a long winter.



Our next project-



Just one more pic. This is my daughter, who preferred to curl up by the fire pit with The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb. She's allergic to shop vacs  .



Sorry if I posted too many pics.  What does "woot" mean, anyway?

26

Terrestrial Gardening / Help me save my Hardy Kiwi... please!

« on: May 05, 2008, 03:26:18 PM »

I let my Hardy Kiwi get out-of-hand by forgetting to properly prune it. Unfortunately, it has already broken dormancy and the usual recommendation is to only prune when dormant. If I prune now, it will bleed. But it's way to big and it's blocking the step from the deck.

My "better half" is so fed up with the thing he wants it gone. Is there any way I can go ahead and prune it now without killing it?

I suspect that this one is the male, because it is much more vigorous than the female. I could post a pic if necessary.
 
Thanks for any advice.

27

Chit Chat / Hummingbird map

« on: April 14, 2008, 11:14:23 AM »

Here is one migration map, I'm sure there are some others out there.
http://www.hummingbirds.net/map.html

I just thought I'd post that, because I'm so surprised at how early they seem to be this year. Time to dust off those feeders and get them outside!
Happy Spring.

28

Chit Chat / Are You Going to Die Soon?

« on: March 17, 2008, 07:32:24 PM »

This is a wonderful, inspiring video from a cancer sufferer, Randy Pausch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tIyt8oSLVs&eurl=http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/


It was not originally aired on Oprah, the original can be seen as a Carnegie Mellon speech, shown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo. The original is quite long, the Oprah version is shortened but is no less inspiring.


Hope my links work, I'm not real good at this sort of thing.

29

Pond Chat / My favorite rock: A Harbinger of Spring

« on: March 16, 2008, 12:54:10 PM »

Not exactly pond related, I just wanted to share my "harbinger of spring" with you.
I was glad that the previous owner left this rock for us when we bought the house. It is always the first thing to show signs of life in late winter.

Sure is a sight for sore eyes... eyes that have seen nothing but WHITE for two months straight!





I love getting up close and seeing how many different species there are. I wonder where this rock originally came from?
 

30

Chit Chat / Winter Hobby

« on: January 09, 2008, 12:17:09 PM »

Hello! Happy New Year, I hope you are all doing well. I just thought I'd pop in to say Hello, and to show you what my Son and I have been working on these past few months. It hasn't always been productive (my lovely 5 yo can destroy days of work in 10 seconds), but it's been a lot of fun.
We can't eat in our Dining Room anymore, but we never did anyway.

Cafe Corner (my Christmas present):





Market Street:



Picnic near Hogwarts:




I would like to get more dimension into it, like hills, rivers, etc. but my table is too small!