Pond News

 It's that time of year!  The upper pond is lower than I've ever seen it, as compared to last year, when it was so very high.  I suppose that's the difference between 15 feet of snow melt and 10 feet.  As the ice started melting, we began to see fish swimming around - yay! - and no floaters so far.   Aaron bought a 50-pound bag of fish food before I could, and I've started feeding the fish almost every day.  The feeding frenzy has begun, and it's worth seeing!  Unfortunately, for me, I've been seeing mudbugs, or crawdads, or whatever you want to call them.  I think they're gross, and I'm constantly stepping on their carcasses on the dam road after foxes or coyotes or whatever have feasted.  

Today, I put in blue dye packets to keep the algae down, and I also threw in bacteria packets.  Both of these are so interesting, because as soon as they hit the water, the outer packet starts dissolving.  Since there is no water going over the spillway, the bacteria should have more time than usual to work.

I am reminded that three spring/summers ago, Mike and I put ourselves in charge of clearing the pond of so much algae...so much.  We'd go out in the canoe with one scooper net, one shovel, and a plastic bin in the middle and scoop until that bin was about halfway full.  We'd then go to the bank, haul that really heavy bin out, and dump it.  In hindsight, I wish I'd counted the number of times we dumped that bin.  But, of course, it was all worth it to have a really gorgeous, clean pond to enjoy.  And I only fell in the first time!

And three migratory geese on the upper pond yesterday and today.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Veenstras' Trail

Image
 We finally made it all the way up the trail to the overlook yesterday, and we saw so many sights along the way.  But first, my happy place: There are still areas of snow, enough for Mirabella and Dempsey to lie down in and get snowcones.  My girl will find the last little bits of snow until it's all gone, and then she will be sad.  Because of the snow still on the trail, there are rivers of water coming down and mud, mud, mud.  Fortunately, Dempsey didn't lie down in the mud puddles, as he loves to do.  We're of course not out of the woods, literally, on that, but Mike has the hose hooked up for dog rinsing. We saw bear prints in the snow, huge prints.  They were heading uphill, luckily, and I was for once smart enough to bring our bear horn.  There weren't any sightings on our part, but I would bet they saw us. There were four to five new trees down on the trail.  Mike was thrilled, of course, because he'll get to take his chain saw and clear the path.  One of the
Read more

The end of summer

 Even though Ouray has been really busy this Labor Day Weekend, we can see the difference between July and now.  I haven't heard numbers relative to tourism, but jeez, it felt like the town had exploded.  I'm happy to have a few weeks of calm before the leaf peepers arrive.    I sprained my ankle again a week ago, but it's not as bad as three years ago.  Mike is hobbling around with self-diagnosed bursitis in his hip.  We are the walking wounded, so there aren't many pictures to post of goings-on.   The 50th annual Imogene Pass Run is this coming Saturday.  Mike is signed up to be at the Camp Bird aid station around 11,500 feet on Saturday, and I'm scheduled to help register 1,550 runners Friday night and early Saturday morning.  That is not a typo.  There are 1,550 runners signed up to do a 17.1 mile run from Ouray (7,700 feet elevation) over Imogene Pass (13,114 elevation) and into Telluride in less than six hours.  I couldn't do it in six days.  Now that our
Read more

Rain!

Image
 It's a gloomy Saturday morning, and it's been this way for a few days now.  The ponds are full, the outlets are gushing, the fish are well.  We'd been hearing loud water-sounding noises from the pond, and we initally thought the aerators had gone rogue.  But no!  There's a waterfall between Aaron and Marchelle's house and David and Faith's.  I climbed back there - well, because I could - and I found it, along with bear poop.  There's a surprise - not.  Anyway, water, water everywhere. Ridgway Reservoir is filling up fast, and we could tell that it was going to happen because the Uncompaghre north of the reservoir went down significantly in volume.    We're seeing paddleboards, sailboats, and kayaks, but that water must be so cold since it's almost all snowmelt. Greg and I went to Box Canon Falls last week.  I was curious about volume and the new structure that had opened near the bottom to allow closer contact with the falls.  I didn't know unti
Read more