It was such a lovely day that I wanted to leave at lunch, but I pissed around long enough that one customer caught me, and then another, and I ended up leaving at 1330h. I had planned to do nothing, but I’m not very good at that, so I watered the stuff around the pond, skimmed leaves, rescued a worm, topped up the pond, listened to Woody, then got out my pwrincess chain saw and scored myself some dead osage-orange to put around the plants by the pond. I had some there and liked it a lot because it’s a border, but not a formal border like concrete or even stone. After I did that, I fired up my leaf blower and blew the leaves off the patio to the bare spot by the bird pool. I’m going for a “pool in the forest with babbling brook” effect, so I figure if grass won’t grow there, then I’ll make a carpet of chipped wood and dead leaves. The soil is rock-hard and lots of clay, so it’s certainly not going to do it any harm. Anyway, I got out my chipper and chipped a bunch of dead bush honeysuckle into mulch (also poisoned some near the spot where I scored my dead osage-orange). I forgot to chip the green-ash branches I’d cut, but I’ll get them later; it’s not like there’s a lot of setup for my chipper.

First, this is from yesterday; I was out collecting seeds and found a pretty (late) coneflower.

A present from Bulky, who is still trying to teach us to hunt. I don’t have a big problem with mice and moles…

I’m still not 100% satisfied with my dead wood border, but it’s better than it was! Also, the mail carrier said the pond looks very nice. Not that I care deeply about the opinions of human beings, but I did work awfully hard on it.

While I was topping up the pond, I was checking for mosquitoes, and it dawned on me that the “yellowjackets” I’d seen flying around the pond are actually drone flies, and the “mosquitoe larvae” in the pond mostly aren’t; they’re drone fly larvae. I don’t know why I didn’t make the connection earlier; I guess I just didn’t think about it. Anyway, there are probably more than a thousand rat-tailed maggots (gross name for harmless larvae of good-guy flies that pollinate flowers) in the pond. They’re tiny white-grey dots now, but they’ll get to a pretty good size by spring.

The vines have mostly died off, and there are lots of seeds (I’ve collected some because I don’t care if they’re weeds), but I did find one oak-leaf morning glory flower. Small, and probably the last, but in October, I’ll take whatever I can get!