(above) this is Shady Pond looking back towards Lotus Pond and then the driveway. On the right edge of the pond you can see a lot of sedge and rush plants that i put in last weekend. i like the way that looks, very natural and the kind of plants you see growing along the edge of a "real" pond. the rush plants are the ones that really mess you up when you cast a lure into them - seems like we would always have to go in with the boat and untangle the popping bug by hand to get it loose.

i went to a boggy area near here just below the spillway of an old pond to get some of these - just dug the plants out of the mud and then replanted them in pots that are set in the water along the edge of the pond. in addition to the rush and sedge i got a lot of arum (looks like arrowhead plant), something else that is about the size of an iris but has lighter green leaves, and a plant called lizard's tail. also found an old pond near here about 4 acres that had been drained over the winter. the bottom of the pond is still moist, and there were some different kinds of rushes and sedge growing there that i transplanted along with some neat looking grasses and some other plants that i can't identify but just looked interesting. i've got all that stuck in the rocks all over the edge of both ponds, and we'll see what grows and what doesn't.

i almost got in a mess walking around the bottom of that drained pond. there were a lot of areas that were probably 3 or 4 feet deep with sticky mud covered with a thin layer of sand. not exactly quicksand, but when i stepped on those spots i would sink in a couple feet before i could stop and then just had to sit down and ease my boots back out of the mud. really neat, though, walking around the bottom of a pond where the water used to be up over my head.