Our Garden Diary

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Diary Part One
Diary Part Three

     June 30, 1999 - Well, one last update before I start a new page.  Mostly bird news, because there sure isn't much gardening going on when we just aren't getting any rain.  Turns out that the wood thrushes I had mentioned earlier hadn't abandoned their nest, she must have just begun laying her eggs the day I found one in it.  They eventually fledged just two babies, I have never checked to see if there were any unhatched eggs in the nest, but we do know the two babies that fledged were definitely wood thrushes and not cowbirds!

     The wrens I eventually did count all six babies, and we assume they fledged without complication.  Now we have a pair brooding six eggs in a box at the front of our property.  We had thrashers fledge again and lost two to our dogs.  It is so frustrating because we try to watch them so closely.  Corrie (we think) had gotten one earlier in the day, and so when we walked them in the evening we were keeping a really close eye on her.  Abby stopped to go to the bathroom about three feet away from one of our hollies, facing the holly, and a baby was in there, about one and a half feet off the ground.  Well, she saw it and it didn't stand a chance.  But had she not stopped right there to go to the bathroom we would have been by it and it would never had been detected.

     On June 28th we found bullfrog eggs in the pond.  That's the first time we know that we ever had bullfrogs lay eggs in the pond.  We never see the eggs from the green frogs because they are laid individually.  But these eggs were floating in a mass at the top of the water.  Some were already emerging and the fish were having a field day, : ( , but we are sure some will remain and mature.  I put about six in the upper pond.

     We have baby robins in our ash tree out front and mockingbirds in the arborvitae right off our patio.  They are getting close to fledging judging by all the noise they are making.

     My actual garden, which consists of a little parsey, five or six tomato plants, and two zucchini plants, is doing quite well.  It is well mulched and not suffering too much from the heat and drought.  And the entire eastern two thirds of Pennsylvania is in a drought.  We have eaten zucchini already, but it will be a while yet until we get any tomatoes.  In amongst all the tomatoes is an azalea that my sister Sandy gave me probably five years ago now.  It bloomed for the first time this year, just four blossoms I believe, and the plant has been eaten off by rabbits several times since we have had it, including this spring.  I had it fenced until last fall when I took the fence off in the process of removing my dead tomato plants.  Now the plant looks the best it ever has because it has bushed out a lot.  But it is still really tiny.  And its leaves were getting eaten by some insect.  The new growth looks pretty good though.  It is a more wild looking azalea which is why we like it.

     The azalea we transplanted last fall that had been in our front yard may or may not make it.  We'd just as soon it didn't because it doesn't fit into our landscape plans, but we would have a hard time gettng rid of it.  We'll just have to wait and see.  The black gum that we transplanted from the woods did eventually die. We'll have to order one from Evironmental Concern.  We will definitely try to transplant another sassafras though, because their are hundreds of baby trees of them around.

     We know of another nest of grackles that fledged right across the street from our driveway.  They are noisy.  Right now there is a small nest in the holly right next to our pavilion.  We don't know if it has been used yet or is yet to be used or what kind of bird it is.

     June 7, 1999 - We had record high temperatures today, reached 96 degrees.  Ugh.  I mowed for a couple of hours in the morning, til I couldn't stand it any more.  These temperatures aren't good for the transplanted sweet gum, but it is hanging in there.

     June 5, 1999 - The Carolina wrens fledged today, from out of our neighbors' natural gas tank.  The parents were quite vocal all day.  Around 4 pm, after the babies had already been out of the nest for a number of hours, Brian and I came home and were still on our driveway when we saw both parents fly from our chain link fence into our Carolina all spice.  Then, one by one, they were followed by five babies.  That was really neat to see.  We don't know if we missed seeing any, but most likely five is how many there are.  They weren't flying great, but doing pretty good.  They are really cute right now with their speckled breasts and little stubby tails, so unlike a wren.

     I am working on killing the grass in the area of our front yard where we want to try and make it like a miniature woods.  As I mow I am bagging the grass and putting the grass clippings on the area where I want the grass to die.  It will be a long process, and an even longer time before it will look somewhat natural, when the grass clippings finally break down and we get a layer of leaves, but we can be patient.

     On the bird front, both our baby bluebirds fledged successfully.  We expect the parents to start a new nest shortly.  We have baby wrens in one of our bluebird boxes.  There were six eggs, I only counted four babies but they are probably all ok.  There were baby thrashers around, we think they raised their brood in our neighbors' forsythia bushes.  He has a row of them along a privacy fence.  Unfortunately one of our dogs got one of the babies, we felt terrible about that.  We really try to watch the dogs closely, but can't prevent everything.  They also got two babies out of our pfitzers.  We thought they were mockingbird babies because there were babies in there being fed that day, very noisy as mockingbirds are.  This was at night and the next day the mockingbird babies were still fine, so maybe the babies they got were some kind of sparrow.  The mockingbirds eventually fledged ok.

     The robins also made it ok out of the hemlock.  Brian and I went by one evening and saw a baby sitting on the side of the nest.  We knew fledging was just around the corner and we kept a tight watch on the dogs over the next few days.  No casualties from our guys.

     I transplanted a black gum and a sassasfras tree from in our woods to the area out front.  The sassafras died almost immediately.  I thought I had nice roots with it, so must be the time of year.  We have so many baby sassafras trees in our woods that we weren't worried about losing it.  They will never amount to anything where most of them are.  We will try again, either in the fall or early spring.  I have to read my book again to see when is a good time.  We had decided to buy a black gum because we know how hard they are to transplant, but then Brian saw an absolutely beautiful one in the woods that we knew would just sit there.  It was about two feet high and straight as could be.  Well, when we dug it out turned out it was a sprout from the roots of a big tree, and we could hardly get any roots at all.  It looked terrible almost right away after we planted it, and eventually lost a lot of the top of the tree, but it has been probably three weeks now since we moved it and it is still alive, has even put out three new leaves.  We are watering it every day, hopefully it will hang in there.  We got an inch of rain the other day, but that is about all since the last time I mentioned getting rain.

     We have toad tadpoles in the pond and I have seen one tadpole, on two different occasions, in the upper pond, that I think is probably from the egg mass that we got from Brian's brother Donald.  They were different from the toad tadpoles, and too small to be from our green frogs, as I don't think they have reproduced yet this year.  Maybe there are a lot up there.  Hopefully.

     The wildflower area that I planted below our willow has a lot of grass in it, and some wildflowers as well.  We are keeping it watered.  It is just slow growing.

     May 14, 1999 - I monitored the bluebird house twice today, late morning and again around 4 pm.  There was one baby the first time and two the second.  Now, hopefully they will get to fledge.  The toads were calling all day today and yesterday also during the day.  They must really be twitterpated.  It stays fairly shaded up there which is probably partly why they still call during the day.

     May 13, 1999 - A lot has been going on now that spring has finally gotten into full gear.  On a sad note, we think that something killed the spotted salamander that was in our pond.  Shortly after the last time that I wrote about it being in the pond, I was up at night with the flashlight and couldn't find it, but I did find an area where the water would normally go over the waterfall, but because of the pump being broken it was just a little pool of water instead, but it looked like it had blood in it.  We're thinking something killed the salamander where the water overflows the pond and the blood pooled in the water.  We have never seen it since, so most likely that did happen.

     On April 14th I chipped up all of our butterfly bushes, and on the 17th I did a little mowing.  I have mowed a lot since then, that is an ongoing battle.  I finally got through the entire yard and have it all cut at one time, the first time this spring.  Now I can enjoy it for a day or two before I have to start again.  It won't be long with the .46 inches of rain we got overnight.  We really need rain badly.  The rain filled up our 100 gallon tub that collects rain water for us to use for watering purposes during dry spells.  It has been a dry spring again, and if the summer goes that way it will be hard to flower garden.  I have a pound of wildflower seed to get planted, but I had to get through the mowing first and then I couldn't clear any beds because it was so dry.

     Over the weekend our neighbor had a bob cat (the machine kind) in his yard that he was using to clear an area along his fence.  In the process he uncovered several big rocks that he brought over in to our front yard.  We still want to get that area to be kind of a mini forest, and we think the rocks will add to the effect.  It needed something to break up the level terrain.  Brian is really getting excited about the project which helps me keep my enthusiasm.  So far we have just the two paw paws, a stewartia, and a flowering dogwood out there.  We want to add a river birch, two striped maples, a moutain maple, an American hornbeam (or two), a witch hazel, some pinxter azaleas, and then understory plants such as ferns, lily of the valley, and woodland wildflowers.  When it is all done and starts to grow up we think it will look really nice.  Actually we also have a wild type azalea that my sister gave me, a regular azalea that is used all over in landscaping, a crab apple and a dwarf white pine, that we don't think will fit in, we aren't sure what we will do with it.  And I have a lot of flowers there right now also that will have to be moved eventually, but not for a while yet.  The stewartia is getting flower buds, we just put it in last year and it isn't really very big, we didn't expect it to flower yet.

    The toads didn't show up until about a week ago, maybe a few days longer than that, but they are making up for lost time.  They were really calling last night with the rain, and I counted five of them when I was there, including two that were in amplexus.  Hopefully it was a male and a female and not two confused males.  I didn't look for eggs this morning because I didn't want the puppy's "help".  Brian's sister also brought us three egg cases from what we believe are northern leopard frogs.  Hopefully they hatched out ok and we will see them later this summer.

     On the bird front, it is a busy year.  We had purple finches nest in the arbovitae right off the patio, and now a pair is using a barn swallow nest we have mounted on the kennel.  Finches have used that in the past and have always built a nest in it.  We can't see any nesting material in there from the ground, so the most she may have done was just line it a little bit.  The bluebirds had their first two eggs destroyed, we believe by a house wren, but finished laying eggs three and four which went undisturbed.  I have to check, they should be hatching today.  Baby robins have already fledged, from our next door neighbors' Austrian pine, which also has a pair of grackles feeding young in it.  The grackles are very noisy whenever we are on that side of the yard, and scold us frequently.  I saw a baby robin fall from the gutter on our outbuiding.  It landed with a thud which one of the dogs heard, they were all outside, but I quickly got them back inside with the line "Do you want to go get a treat?" and when I checked a few minutes later the baby had disappeared.  I have seen a baby robin on two occasions since then.  And we have a robin sitting on eggs in our autumn olive and another in one of our hemlocks.  A pair of titmice used a nest box in our woods, hopefully the young fledged successfully, I haven't checked.  Mockingbirds are nesting in both our pfitzers and a tartarian honeysuckle.  We know there have to be sparrows around but haven't seen any nests.  On a sad note, three babies were thrown out of a nest at the edge of our woods the day before yesterday, we don't know what kind they were.  I think the bird we are most excited about, if is is indeed what we think it is, is a wood thrush that is nesting in a holly tree inside of our woods.  Even looking with the binoculars I wasn't sure if that is what it is.  Hopefully it isn't just a robin.  And hopefully the dogs won't find out she is there because the holly tree isn't very big.  Catbirds have been really active the last week also.  We also have a pair of brown thrashers who have been around quite a bit, who we believe are feeding young, either at the edge of our woods or in the mass of forsythia our neighbor has along his privacy fence.

     I just checked the bluebird house, still two eggs.  Momma flew out and poppa was sitting on top, so all appears well.

     Yesterday I weeded around two of our exbury azaleas, the Klondyke Old Gold is in full bloom, and also around a dogwood and our sweetgum, and permanently removed the fences we had around all of them, so that area looks much better.  Hopefully the dogs won't do too much damage there when playing.

     In the afternoon we went to Farrell's Nursery to check out pumps for our pond.  We need to get ours replaced and found out that sump pumps have an oil in them, called di-electric (sp?) oil, that is highly toxic to fish and amphibians should it leak into the  pond, so this time we think we will get a pump that is safe for the environment.  Guess we have been lucky ours has never leaked.  We will probably return to the nursery tomorrow to give the man we talked to, Gary, more stats on what we did have, and to buy some sand, plants, and anacharis.

     We ended the day on a really nice note.  Around 11 pm we were being treated to a chorus of toads singing in our pond, only to be joined in by the occasional call from a nearby great horned owl.

     April 8, 1999 - I let the dogs out around 4 am when the two remaining puppies woke me up because they had to go outside.  I let the adults out back and the pups out front.  Some of the adults didn't return for a while, so I finally started calling them.  I eventually got everyone in the house except for Corrie and Abby, and despite much calling they wouldn't come.  That usually spells trouble, so I got my flashlight and went out to have a look.  Corrie came up to me right away, but Abby was at the side of the yard chewing on something.  Well, she had a rabbit.  And it was dead.  And, it only had one rear leg!!!!!  That is so sad, it had to be the rabbit that Joy got hold of on March 10, 1999.  How it survived for almost a month with a wound like that, I'll never know.  Brian and I both had to agree it was probably best off having been killed, but I hate to see that happen.  The dogs have only killed two other adult rabbits since we have been here.  Abby also caught one that was ok when I released it.  The one from this morning had lots of ticks on its neck.  I'm sure it had no way of scratching itself for the past month.  I put it in the freezer and will later give it to our neighbor who does the wildlife rescues.  The dogs are usually quite gentle when they catch something, and we have been able to take very tiny bunnies from them unharmed.  Also moles.  But bunnies get killed sometimes just because they are so fragile.  The one adult that got killed was by Dusty, and we don't know if he clamped down on it too hard because of the competition with the other dogs, or if the rabbit just died from fright.  Joy got the other one, again in the middle of the night.  I never saw her bring it in the house, I don't always notice these things when I am half asleep.  I just kept hearing a thumping noise on the floor.  When I got up to check Joy had been eating it on the bedroom floor.  Yuk.

     April 7, 1999 - Salamander still there.  The male cardinal was there when I looked, don't know about the female because I didn't want to look too long and maybe scare them again.

     April 6, 1999 - I cut down some of our butterfly bushes today and weeded in our front flower bed where I have a lot of perennials coming up.  I still have to chip the butterfly bushes, and actually have four more plants to cut down.  Hopefully the chipper will work ok because it has insulation in it from the mice, and I can't get to it to remove it.  Neither could my father-in-law when he tried last fall.  I don't know if it is a fire hazard.  The salamander was there this evening.  I'm sure it was there last night too, as I don't believe it is leaving the pond, it was most likely just under leaves.  I was up at the pond around dusk and was curious as to whether or not the cardinals were under the pavilion yet.  I shined the light under it and scared out one for sure, but I think both.  Later in the evening they weren't there.  I felt bad.

     April 5, 1999 - I was looking into the bucket which holds our pump for the pond, and there were six tadpoles in it.  One of them has tiny back legs already, maybe it went through the winter that way.  I didn't see the salamander this evening, but I did see three water beetles in the pond where the salamander has been staying.  I forgot to mention that our pump has stopped working, we have to get it fixed soon because the fish will be needing the oxygen.  It just stopped the other day, and it still hums so maybe it just needs to be taken out and cleaned, but I don't know how to remove it.  : (

     April 4, 1999 - The spotted salamander is still in the upper pond, it was not to be seen during the daylight hours though.  Both cardinals are still roosting under the pavilion.

     April 3, 1999 - Today I worked along the driveway, trying to uncover our sedums and our chrysanthemums.  I didn't get very far, only uncovering two sedums and one mum.  At night I saw a spotted salamander in the upper pond.   We read up on them and found out that they spend most of their time underground, and for the most part are nocturnal, so are seldom seen, but they are considered on of the more common salamanders found in Pennsylvania.  It's the first time Brian or I have ever seen one.  We guess she is there to lay eggs, but I have only seen one salamander so far.  Sounds like two of them should be performing a courtship dance in the water.  Maybe another will show up.

     April 1, 1999 - I cut down our pampas grasses today, all but five of the dwarf ones up by the pond, and one that I did a few days ago.  That one was the worst one that I have to do, because the leaves are like razors.  But I wore long sleeves and gloves so it wasn't too bad.  I cut them down with a big knife which worked pretty good, except that it is getting dull.  I also cleaned around most of our daylilies.  They are really starting to grow.

     March 20, 1999 - The dogs chased the great blue heron this morning when I let them out, so, he (she) is still around.  I haven't removed the plywood so the fish still can seek shelter under it.

     March 18, 1999 - I did street cleanup today, cleaning between our house and the end of our road.  I didn't get it finished, hopefully I will be able to get out again before I get too bogged down with yard work.  It's disgusting all the trash that is along just one small section of road.  I don't think I did cleanup last year, I just didn't fit it in, but I have done it a couple of other times in the past.  It is one small way I can help the environment.

     March 10, 1999 - This one is kind of gross.  I let the dogs out after dark, and they didn't come back for a long time.  I finally gave them a call and Joy came into the house with something in her house.  I figured it was a mouse or a vole, but when I took it away from her, it was an entire rear leg of a rabbit.  The only "cute" part of it was watching her run to the whelping box to offer the leg to her puppies.  She obviously had no intention of eating it herself.  Nature is fascinating.  We had to wonder how in the world she even got the leg and could only come to two conclusions.  The first is almost too gross to think about, and that is maybe she grabbed onto the leg as a rabbit was exiting our yard through the chain link fence, and actually tore it off.  I could find no evidence of where a rabbit might have gotten hurt along our fence, but then I was looking in the dark with a flashlight.  The other possibility is that a bird (maybe an owl) dropped it and the dogs retrieved it.  But that also seems unlikely.  So, guess it will remain a mystery.

     February 18, 1999 - Since the weather has improved the fish are much more active, coming out from hiding.  Today I counted 32 of them.  I don't think we will need to replace any.  Yesterday I saw five orfes, that leaves only one unaccounted for.  But it could have been in hiding.  We had the puppies out, individually again, and then with Terra and Joy, on an individual basis, and we can see improvement already in their confidence level outside.  While I had one of the puppies outside a red tailed hawk gave a whistle up above, we came inside quickly.  The hawk could be a real threat to a five pound puppy.

     February 17, 1999 - Both the male and the female cardinal were under the pavilion again.  She is hard to spot because she isn't that bright red.  We took each puppy out on an individual basis today.  Most did ok, some aren't quite ready for the adventure.

     February 16, 1999 - We took the puppies out for the first time today.  I had six outside when the phone rang, so I didn't get to interact with them much.  Five of them crawled under Brian's wheelchair, a safe haven that every puppy we have ever had has found quickly.  The sixth came back inside under the couch.  We think they are ready for very short periods outside, they turned four weeks old today.

     February 12, 1999 - Perhaps that groundhog was right, because we have had some nice weather since he predicted spring was just around the corner.  Today it reached 74 degrees on our thermometer.  We didn't get out to enjoy it much, not until late afternoon and by that time the wind was really blowing.  But Brian still just had on a flannel shirt.  After a front went through the temperature was back in the forties.  : (  We even had a little sleet and snow.  It was so nice today that the fish actually ventured out above the plywood during the day.  They have not done that once that I have seen since I put it in.  We haven't seen Red at all, and I truly think she was eaten by the heron.  But, who knows, she may be under the plywood on her back, only time will tell.

     February 10, 1999 - Well, only the male cardinal was there tonight, but maybe they are thinking about pairing up.  There were just two bluebirds checking out a house today, a male and a female.  Usually there are four or five at a time.  The other day I got outside and started to trim back a multiflora rose that is really getting out of hand on the back of our property.  I didn't get very far with it, but it sure gave me spring fever just doing some yard work.

     February 9, 1999 - When the dogs and I did our nightly walk up to the pond, we looked under the pavilion, as we often do, to check that the male cardinal was there roosting.  Well, he was, but there was also a female cardinal there as well, that was neat  They were both near the top of the building, about a foot apart, on separate perches.

     February 2, 1999 - Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow today which means spring is just around the corner.  Yeah.  Actually, January was horrible as far as weather is concerned.  We had lots of ice, much more than usual.  It made the lawn a real mess for the dogs and me to walk on, and of course when Joy had her puppies and I had to keep walking her outside (January 19th) we could hardly keep our footing.  Since the thaw, and it took the yard a long time to clear off, the weather has actually been milder than normal.  I saw four tadpoles in the middle pond tonight.  Looks like it should be so cold, but they are active.  I found a dead frog in the big pond the other night.  It was just a little one, must have emerged from a tadpole in the fall.  I don't know what killed it.  I saw lots of fish, more than twenty, including big gray.  It's nice to know she is still here.  I also saw what must be the comet that I found injured in the pump bucket, because it has scars on its side.  It appears to be all healed.  We hadn't seen the great blue heron for quite some time, because the pond was completely frozen over for several weeks.  We thought maybe he forgot about us, but just the other morning he was back.  That was the first time the dogs actually saw it, and they didn't like it at all.  We're still not sure what they thought it was, but they acted like it was an intruder in their yard, rather than just something to chase like a squirrel.  The cardinal is still perching under the pavilion.

     December 9, 1998 - Well, we are finally back to more seasonable temperatures.  We have been enjoying record highs, temperatures in the 70's, how pleasant for December.  Even today was warmer than normal, but mid 50's and damp.  Mr. Heron was back at the pond this morning.  Too bad I didn't realize it sooner or I would have tried to get a picture.  Normally he flies away at the first sign of movement at the house, but today I let Dusty out and he was midway up the yard and the heron was still in the pond.  I didn't realize he was there until he flew a minute or so later.  Dusty, ok we have to cut him a break, he is ten, never saw him.  As of a few days ago we had two frogs that we know of in the pond.  I found a big comet in the pump bucket when I cleaned out leaves as I topped the pond.  He appeared unharmed.  And this evening when I finally remembered to look, because Brian mentioned this last week already, I found that the male cardinal is back roosting under the pavilion.  It was like seeing an old friend.

     November 28, 1998 - A beautiful day out, mid sixties and almost December.  Since the heron shouldn't be a problem now, though he was there again this morning, I decided to remove leaves from the pond again.  I left them there the last couple of days to help hide the fish.  It is so much easier to remove them now that all the muck and rocks and pots are no longer in the pond.  There are still some pots, but I can work around them.  I no longer use the skimmer that we have, but instead use the fish net.  It holds a lot more leaves and works quite well.  I went up to the pond after dark to see if I could see any fish.  Still didn't see any orfes, but saw at least a dozen fish.  Good.  I saw a Carolina wren in our Peking cotoneasters in front of our house today, we hardly ever see any, though Brian's dad sees them frequently.  And, I took Joy for a walk down the road and found a road killed squirrel, which I gave to our neighbor who does wildlife rehabilitation.  She has a vulture who enjoys them.  And saves her having to buy a couple of meals.

     November 27, 1998 - A possible solution came to me late last night, as to what to do about Mr. Heron.  I thought if we could sink a piece of wood into the pond, then the fish would have a place to hide.  So, I took a piece of plywood, about two and a half by three feet, and put it in the pond.  Surprise, surprise, it floated!  Hmmmmm.  Brian suggested weighting it down with rocks.  I put a big rock in the middle of it and forced it under.  Thought I had it, but slowly one end started rising out of the water, it was like "Jaws".  All I needed was the music.  One more rock and we had it.  Seems like it should work quite well too.  Saw a few fish swimming around.  I know there was an orfe there yet on Wednesday but haven't seen one since then.  But I think they would be harder to catch than the comets.

     November 26, 1998 - Well, Thanksgiving morning, and our suspiscions were confirmed.  I saw a Great Blue Heron fly from our pond, guess he was giving himself a nice breakfast.  We don't know how many fish are left.  Late in the day I found a large comet in the bucket with the pump.  I shut the pump off and left it in there for about three hours, and then decided it was better off in the pond, so I put it in there.  It had injuries on both its sides, so we don't know how it will do, but it can move fine.  Now, what to do about the heron?

     November 24, 1998 - I spent a lot of time today cleaning leaves out of our pond.  I've done it a number of times this fall, and the fish have always been active, usually asking for food.  Today I hardly saw any fish at all, and it was a warm day, they should have been very visible.  By the time I was finished both Brian and I were starting to wonder if perhaps a predator had been visiting, maybe a Great Blue Heron?  We cut back our two clematis vines that are on our pavilion, down to about a foot in height.  There was so much dead wood in them last year that they weren't attractive at all.  We don't know if this will hurt them, but we had to do something.

     October 20, 1998 - Over the last few days I have cleaned out the dogs' kennel building, scrubbing the floor (it's plywood) as best I could, putting on primer and then two coats of white paint.  It won't look clean for now, but when the puppies come it will be a lot easier to clean than when we had Terra's puppies in that building.  They did their business all over that floor and it was very hard to get clean.  The paint should help a lot.  It looks real nice now.

     October 18, 1998 - We had our invasion of the lady bugs today up at the pavilion.  There were probably hundreds of them, flying all over, landing on us as soon as we stood still.  They just love the pavilion in the fall on a warm, sunny day.  And there are all different kinds of lady bugs there.  It is really neat to see.

     September 24, 1998 - We had a monarch chrysallis underneath our birdbath that we have been watching for a while now.  It is the second one that was there, unfortunately I didn't know the first one was there and it got destroyed when I cleaned out the bath.  I've been really careful with this one and today the butterfly emerged.

     September 15, 1998 - We have had some nasty winds since the last time I wrote, and one of the casualties was the house that Brian saw the flying squirrel in.  The house is still in the locust tree, but it has fallen onto some branches below where it was mounted, and is at an angle.  We don't know if the flying squirrel will still use it.

     September 6, 1998 - Brian saw a flying squirrel sticking its head out of the flicker house we have mounted in our locust tree.  Several days ago we found patio toad dead, on the patio.  He was just sitting in front of the big water bowl that the dogs have, the one we have seen him in on occasion.  I don't know what killed him.  He appeared uninjured, and he was in a sitting position, just kind of mummified.  It was strange.  We wondered it he could have tried to eat something too big and choked, or maybe he ingested something poisonous?  Guess we will never know.

     August 15, 1998 - I've been a little lax in putting our pond updates in so I will try to remember all we did here, but not the dates.  The tiny leakage problem mentioned on August 3 still appears to be there, but it never affected the level of the pond before so we aren't going to worry about it.  We filled the pond and also both small pools that are in the streambed.  We had never measured the gallons in the pond before, so this time we took the opportunity of having it empty to get a rough estimate when we filled it.  We came up with approximately 1,000 gallons in the actual pond, approximately 135 gallons in the large pool, and about 7 gallons in the little pool, I didn't say that one was big.  All looked great except the level in the bigger of the two pools, hereafter referred to as just the pool, as it is the only real pool there.  That level dropped a whole lot in a matter of hours and we topped it off, with about 18 gallons the same day we filled it.  Then it continued to drop, a lot, and we later topped it off again, even more than the first time.  But then, it held its level.  And has ever since, even with the waterfall running, but more importantly at the stage we were at, with it not running.  The only thing we were able to figure is that the dry rocks absorbed that much water.  We didn't think that was possible but there is no other explanation.  A leak would still be there, and it wasn't overflowing the liner because the pump wasn't on when the water was disappearing.  The Shiloh workers told us the upper pond would be big enough to put some fish in.

     We let the pond sit for a day or so and then returned the tadpoles.  I tried to count them as I was returning them to the pond, and put down a count for each of the three buckets I put back in.  Between them and two I found in the tub with the frogs, it added up to exactly 400, though I know it is plus or minus a few.  Unfortunately we have lost a few since then, ones that went in the bucket with the pump and got sucked through, but didn't survive.  Most have gone in the rocks in the waterfall, as that is the only shelter there was at that time.  That and the lily pots, which we returned fairly quickly, along with the green frogs.  We had the three in the tub to return, and the strangest thing was finding another green frog sitting on the trellis near one of the tubs, when we were all finished emptying the "frog" tub contents to the pond.  We have no idea where it came from.  Good news was that there were no dead frogs in the bottom of the tub, so perhaps the two frogs I found in with the fish were the two that ended up missing from the frog tub.  Our anacharis was down to only one pot and the fish made pretty short work of that once they got back in the pond.  On a very sad note, we returned the snails to the pond the same time that we returned the tadpoles and the three fish that were in with the frogs.  The tadpoles and fish are fine, but the Dry Lock must be extremely toxic to the snails when it is fresh, and we lost every single one.  About three dozen that we had left.  We also lost at least two, maybe three, dozen that I had in buckets with the tadpoles, or in with the fish.  Guess that water was too warm.  So we now have zero snails, and a very green pond, from algae, but that is typical when you restart a pond.  The only remaining snails are the ones we gave to our neighbor Ray.  Maybe his will reproduce and we can get some back next year.  If he can find them in his jet black water.  Poor Ray, he added a product called pond shade to his water.  It is supposed to make the water dark to help keep out sunlight and cut down on algae.  Well, Ray miscalculated and put in TEN times the amount he was supposed to.  He'll never see those snails!  : )

     We returned the fish to the pond, everything went smoothly there.  We put five of the smaller fish in the pool, but they didn't stay there.  They went over the waterfall sometime, we think during the night of the day they were put into the pool, and joined their buddies in the pond.  Guess we'll leave them there.  They didn't get hurt anyway.  We also made a trip down to Tony's Tropical Fish and Birds to buy some more fish, like we really need them.  But we wanted some more golden orfes and thought we would get a sarasa or two, a couple of red tailed rudds, and a couple of shubunkins.  They had five inch and three inch orfes available.  We opted to go with the five inch size, and since they only had five we bought them all, and decided we would let Ray keep all five of the ones we gave him a few weeks ago.  So now we are at six orfes.  We only intended to buy four but we couldn't leave just one.  Our orfe is about seven inches long.  The ones we lost last year were about 13 inches.  We can't wait for these to grow, they are quite impressive when they reach that size.  Hopefully the pond isn't too crowded and they will attain that size.  Tony's had some shubunkins, but no really pretty ones, and if they aren't impressive in a tank with clear water where we could see every detail, we knew they wouldn't stand out in our pond.  We decided to wait to get them.  And they were out of rudds and sarasas, which may be just as well because we do have a lot of fish.

     The Shiloh workers returned on Wednesday, August 13, to adhere the rocks around the edge of the pond.  That part of it doesn't look as nice as when we had it done originally, but this is what we want.  It has to be safer.  We have a young niece and nephew who visit a lot, and we don't want the rocks shifting under them, plus the dogs and me walking on them all the time.  We wanted them secure.  As it is, a few still move, and one doesn't appear to have been adhered at all.  We will find out what Shiloh used and fix them up, or have them come back and do it.  We think Barry will still be out because he never saw the finished waterfall and we are sure he wants to.  It is beautiful!!!  There are three drops, counting the main one into the pond.  It is a slower paced streambed than it had been last time, and has a little curve to it.  Dave did an excellent job.  We are completely satisfied.  Hopefully the dogs won't do much damage to the positioning of the rocks because they walk all over it.  We try our best to keep them off.  The way it was done originally they couldn't do much damage, but this waterfall is higher and has more small rocks, we think they could cause some problems.  We'll keep working at training them to keep off.

     The Shiloh workers returned our plants when they came to adhere the rocks around the pond.  They are hurting a little, but that's to be expected.  One frogs has adopted them as "his" territory.  We've only been seeing two frogs on a regular basis.  One day we had a little frog that just showed up.  Haven't seen him (or her) for a while now.

     August 3, 1998 - Barry from Shiloh Nurseries was supposed to come out today to put on the silicon sealant around our pipe where we still have a tiny leakage problem.  So it was a really pleasant surprise when an entire crew came to work on the streambed and waterfall.  They got quite a bit done, enough that they said we can fill the pond tomorrow!  And run the waterfall!!  And get the fish and frogs back into the pond!!!  We hope to start filling it after I get home from work.  It will have to sit for a while to warm to a temperature closer to what the fish are in now in the tubs.  We would start filling it in the morning, and we still might, but we don't want to get the silicon wet that early.  They didn't put that on until late in the day, and we want to give it enough time to dry.  We have to put some water from the tubs in so that the beneficial bacteria can colonize the new pond, which is sterile at this point.  There should be a lot of bacteria on the pots and plants as well, so when we return the lilies and anacharis that too should help.

     August 2, 1998 - We didn't do much today.  I did empty the tiny bit of remaining water, which might have been a little over one gallon.  I tried to catch grasshoppers to feed the green frogs because these crickets are getting expensive at one dollar a dozen and three frogs eating twice a day.  They go through 18 crickets a day.  Anyway, Brian said I looked like a teenager out there with my net, baseball hat on, and his T-shirt. Good, maybe nobody realized it was a 41 year old woman.  We followed our fruitless grasshopper catching escapade, well, I did catch one, by going to Tony's and buying more crickets.

     August 1, 1998 - We started the draining process early in the morning, just siphoning with a hose.  We headed to Easton for a 50th wedding anniversary party for Janet's parents and let the pond continue to drain while we were gone.  We initially had the water draining to our willow tree, but later had moved it to our silky dogwoods.  We hated to see that water go to waste.  When we initially drained the pond, we also directed the water under the willow.  When we got home and checked how much water was left in the pond I couldn't believe how completely it had drained.  There was just a tiny bit in the bottom.

     July 31, 1998 - We got 1.2 inches of rain overnight and were really surprised, and pleased, when Barry from Shiloh called and said they would be coming out this morning to start the waterfall and streambed area.  They couldn't go to their scheduled job because of the rain, so boy, were we glad we got that rain.  Dave and his co-worker worked until lunchtime, and got a good start on the waterfall.  They installed the liner which will cover the streambed.  The concrete underneath will act as a catch basin should there ever be a leak in the liner.  They actually got quite far with the waterfall area itself.  It's going to be quite different from the way it had been.  Plus the upper pool is turning into more of an upper pond.  It should be big enough to hold some fish.  Dave measured the depth and said it is 13 inches.

     July 30, 1998 - We started filling the pond around 9:00 in the morning.  It was after 1:30 before it was full.  Now it has to sit like that for 48 hours before we can drain it.

     July 29, 1998 - We've had the pond and streambed uncovered to allow the sealant to completely dry.  It must dry for a week before we may fill the pond with water.  We only had to cover it once during the drying process because of rain.  It's been very dry here the last month and a half.  I found a female green frog in one of the tubs that has fish in it.  I couldn't believe it.  I find it hard to believe it has been in there for close to two weeks.  She didn't really seem sure what to do when she got on the ground.  I was going to let her go, but then decided to put her in the tub with the male green frogs.  She learned quickly about crickets.  We picked our first two ripe tomatoes of the season.  Ummmm.  We also have a lot with blossom end rot.  Oh well.

     July 27, 1998 - Brian and I saw something moving very quickly across the bottom of the dry pond today.  Turned out to be a hellgrammite which I fed to one of the frogs.  He loved it.

     July 26, 1998 - I saw a naiad in the tub with the green frogs.  Don't know if it will ever make it back into the pond, or whether it will become frog food.  Our friend Lynne's daughter Lexie and I caught some grasshoppers to feed to the frogs.  We've been buying them crickets which they eat with relish.

     July 23, 1998 - Dave and Raymond were out today to put the second, and final, coat of Drylock on the pond and streambed.  That actually puts five coats on the pond since we did three coats six years ago when Brian's brother Donald made the pond.  The weather was cooler and drier and the fumes didn't seem so noxious.  We have only been seeing two male green frogs in the tub with our lilies.  We don't know what happened to the other two and fear the two remaining frogs may be the dominant ones and they might have killed the other two.  If that is the case, they are somewhere in the bottom of the tub.  I did see a bullfrog after the death of the hurt bullfrog, but haven't seen it since.  Don't know if it is ok or not.

     July 22, 1998 - Barry and Raymond, two workers from Shiloh, came out in the morning and put a coat of sealant on the pond and the streambed.  Drylock has a very strong odor.  With the heavy humidity the smell lingered all night.

     July 21, 1998 - This morning I removed the plastic from over the streambed and misted the concrete, which is covered with burlap.  I turned off the pumps and couldn't believe it when I found a frog in one of the tubs with the fish.  Poor thing, it has been bombarded by water for three days.  It didn't resist at all when I fished it out with a net.  But it only took about a minute before it escaped from my hands, and even though I intended to put it in the tank with the other frogs, I really didn't have the heart, and let it escape into our woods.  I think it will be fine there.  I replaced the water in each of the naiad containers, added some fresh water to the fish tubs, and some fresh water in with the tadpoles.  I also put some tadpoles in for the naiads.  Shiloh wasn't out today.  They are supposed to be coming out in the morning to seal the pond and the streambed, but now that it rained around suppertime they might not be here.  We are sealing the concrete with UGL Drylock masonry waterproofer, gray.

     July 20, 1998 - The Shiloh workers were back on the job today.  Barry Plowman, the foreman was here, and three other workers.  And though not pond or garden related, poor Stan, the air conditioner repairman was here twice today, trying to fix our air conditioner in the 90 degree weather outside.  Brian said he really felt sorry for him because the air conditioner unit was in the hot sun, and he had to clean out all around it.  Now, back to the pond.  Barry worked on sealing the area where the PVC pipe goes through the concrete and into the tub that contains our pump.  The other workers concreted the streambed area.  Brian thinks the small pool in the streambed will be bigger than it used to be.  That would be nice, we wouldn't mind that at all.  The tadpoles seem to be doing ok, I've been feeding them fish food and they've been eating it.  I think Red got just a little stressed in the late afternoon while I had the pump off, and it was only off for an hour.  But then, she is very easily stressed.  And we had another casualty, two actually.  One was an older happening, we found a dead toad in the area that is dug out between the pond and the pump bucket.  We figure it got down in there and then couldn't get back out.  The other casualty was the big bull frog which really made me feel bad.  But when I took it out of the tub its left rear leg was just hanging in shreds at the knee area.  It must have been hurt a lot worse than I thought.  Brian said that it was the last frog they found, and it had been in muck for a long time, and tossed around in the muck as it was moved from place to place, and possibly even raked over.  I guess I should have realized something was amiss yesterday when it stayed on the lily pads and let me get a good look at it.  The bull frogs are much more likely to disappear than the green frogs.  I have the naiads each in their own container, well I did until Barry had to put two together, I don't know if they will eat each other !, and thought one had died the other day when I saw this very limp naiad in the one container.  Turns out it shed its skin, and since then I've seen it at least two other times.

     July 19, 1998 - The fish must be getting a little bit used to their new surroundings.  I've been dropping food into the water about half an hour after I stop the pumps.  One time when I did that today, when I checked a while later most of the food was gone.  But I've still hardly seen any of the fish.  There are still two in with the frogs but they seem to be doing ok, not stressed like the ones we removed.  The fish who got caught in the net yesterday, died late in the day today.  It was during one of the times I had the pumps turned off, and it was probably more succeptible to the lack of oxygen.  I had put some small tadpoles in with the naiads and I do believe they ate them, so as much as I hate to sacrifice tadpoles, the naiads have to eat, so I put a couple more in with each one.  The frogs seems to be holding their own but I'm not sure about the injured bull frog.  It looks fine except its foot on the injured leg looks a little strange.

     July 18, 1998 - We could see that the fish who were in with the frogs were distressed so our neighbor, Ray Knecht, came down and removed the water lily pots from the tub and fished out six fish that we put in a tub that had aeration.  Hopefully we got them all.  I noticed that the last frog that the workers caught, the big bull frog, has a skinned up rear leg.  The fish are not to be seen.  The pumps really keep the water flowing, a little too much probably.  I stop it every now and then for an hour or so.  We gave Ray some Japanese black snails for his pond.  We had our first casualty of our pond restoration project, not counting some snails that were missed in the cleanup.  A comet, about five inches long, tried to jump out of the one tub.  It got caught in the netting and by the time I found it it was barely breathing.  I resuscitated it and got it swimming again, but it is pretty weak and injured around its gill area.  We just have to wait and see what happens with it.  Brian said a couple of fish had to be resuscitated Friday before they ever got the nets on the tubs, because they found them on the floor under our pavilion where they have everything set up.  Apparently those fish are doing fine.

     July 17, 1998 - I was out at 6:00 in the morning to begin the pond draining process.  We siphoned water out of the pond for 3 1/2 hours with the hose, letting it drain around our willow tree, which will use that water in no time.  I rescued one more naiad, bringing that total to four.  The workers from Shiloh Nurseries were here for about five hours.  They completely drained the pond and took most of the plants with them, back to the nursery.  They will repot just a small amount and bring them back.  Brian said when they took the plants out of the bog area, they had to pull it out as one big mass, then cut it into four big pieces to put on their truck.  There were rocks in amongst the roots, and pots somewhere.  They split most of the fish up between two tubs, with a pump in each one to keep it well aerated.  Then they put the frogs that they caught, plus our two waterliles and our anacharis, in another tub, plus some small fish, with no aeration.  They also removed all the rocks from around the streambed.  There was about a foot of muck in the bottom of the pond.  I really feel sorry for the two who cleaned it out.  When I went up around supper time there was a frog sitting under a butterfly weed at the edge of the pond, and he jumped in when I went towards him.  Poor guy, there was no water to land in so he plopped down in the bottom of the empty pond.  I caught him and put him in with the others.  Brian said that one of the workers caught a small snake that was under a rock and brought it down to the house for him to see.  The worker thought it might be a copperhead, but using our book on reptiles of Pennsylvania, they identified it as an eastern milk snake.  The book said they are often confused with copperheads and therefore killed, but they are actually one of the most beneficial snakes in the state, feeding on small rodents.  We were very pleased to know that even had the snake turned out to be a copperhead, the worker intended to release it, someplace else, unharmed.  The snake was released in our woods.

     July 16, 1998 - Shiloh Nurseries called on the eleventh to say they would be out this week to start work on our pond.  In anticipation of that I have spent a lot of time catching tadpoles and putting them in buckets, so they don't get destroyed when the pond work begins.  I know I must have at least 200, ranging in size from really tiny to about an inch in length.  I never found any of the biggest tadpoles, the ones that should be emerging soon as frogs.  I did find three naiads (dragonfly larvae) that I saved also, and a lot of Japanese black snails.  We are really anxious to have the work begin.  They start tomorrow.

     July 11, 1998 - Brian and I saw a neat sight today.  We noticed two hawks flying overhead and one had its legs extended downward.  Eventually the other one lowered its legs also.  We thought at first that they may have been in some sort of battle, or territorial display, but neither one seemed aggressive towards the other, they seemed to be flying in synchronized fashion.  Our neighbor saw two hawks the other week who had caught a rabbit.  It was right outside his house on the lawn.  He said the noise they were making was extremely loud, and he got to watch them tussle over the kill.

     July 8, 1998 - The hummingbirds have been particularly active lately, coming to the feeder many times a day.  We enjoy watching them.  We got over 2 l/2 inches of rain overnight and through the afternoon.  Much needed rain.  Red has been involved in spawning activity.  I noticed this a couple of weeks ago but forgot to mention it.  So she must be back 100%, until this winter.  We'll see how that goes.  I just took a yardstick outside to measure the new growth on the Kentucky Coffee tree, it is just over four feet of new growth.  Unbelievable.  It has a second branch that we left on, that is probably two feet in length.  All that growth is since the top broke off May 21st.

     July 5, 1998 - I found a tiny toad while mowing today.  It is the first one that I've found this year.  I don't think it is quite as tiny as some I've found in the past so it has probably been out of the pond for a while.  We went to see our neighbors' pond.  Ray finally confessed he changed the water yesterday, but I don't know if that is why the fish wouldn't come out, but boy where they hiding.  We've had our fish do that in the past also.  Could never really figure out why but they eventually get over it.  Yesterday I emptied a house sparrow nest, with two eggs in it, out of our flycatcher box.  We didn't think they would bother that box because of how big it is and how high it is in the tree (about ten feet).  I only noticed they were using it because of how messy their nests are, there was nesting material coming out of the hole.  We saw them near a box in our front yard and thought they were going to use that but this might be the same pair.  I actually saw them mating out front and they haven't really added much material to that box.  A male has also been calling a lot from the house where the bluebirds just finished raising their brood.  We did see the male bluebird at that house once today.  We want to keep it open just in case the bluebirds decide to raise a third brood.  When I emptied the recently vacated house wren nest I also took a partially built house wren nest out of the box where the bluebirds raised their first brood.  I didn't think the wrens were actually using it but maybe they are going to because they are rebuilding in that same box.  I'll let them alone as long as they are actively nesting.  But male wrens have a tendency to fill all available nest sites in their territory with nesting material even if they aren't going to use the box.  I don't want the box just sitting there full of nesting material and unavailable for the bluebirds in case house sparrows take over the box they just used.