Poor Richard’s Almanac

The deadline-driven Ben was finally able to take a few hours off yesterday and head off with Silence Dogood and our good friend Richard Saunders of Poor Richard’s Almanac fame to my favorite water-garden emporium, Aquatic Concepts near Kutztown, Pennsylvania. It was time to renovate the half-barrel water gardens here at Hawk’s Haven, and I was looking for plants, fish, and snails. Richard was looking for interesting marginals, as plants that grow along pond edges are called, for his in-ground water garden, and was yet again flirting with the idea of getting a couple of koi. And Silence was hoping to find a replacement for one of our silver gazing balls, which had a fatal encounter with high wind and rocks when we set it out last month. (See our earlier post, “Gazing ball grief,” for more on that.)

As always, Aquatic Concepts was a plant- and fish-lover’s bonanza. With two container water gardens to stock (we have a third in the greenhouse to hold tender water plants through the winter, but there’s no need to stock that), restraint is the major challenge for our friend Ben. After drooling over water lilies and lotuses, I ultimately selected a parrot feather, floating heart (which resembles a mini-water lily), water lettuce (just one, knowing they’ll spread like crazy), variegated cattail, and dwarf and standard papyrus. Richard found a fantastic variegated taro and added a variegated cattail and several variegated water iris to his haul.

Then it was time for the fish. After requesting seven snails to keep the water gardens clean and algae-free, our friend Ben looked with unabashed lust at the endless exquisite goldfish on offer. (And drooled uncontrollably at a goldfish-sized luminous lemon koi, but failed at pretending it wouldn’t grow to be a foot long.) After years of choosing the very loveliest of the goldfish and watching them fall to raccoon depradations, however, this year by some miracle our friend Ben had a rush of brains to the head (in the immortal words of a friend’s mother).

Our friend Ben has observed that, in years past, a brazen raccoon has appeared on the very deck of Hawk’s Haven in late spring and has helped him- or herself to both the outdoor cats’ food and to any unsuspecting goldfish (and even snails) in the half-barrel water garden in one corner of the deck. These depredations continue nightly for a couple of weeks, and then the raccoon moves on to wherever it’s going and that’s the last we see of it for another year.

So rather than sacrifice yet more expensive, exquisite goldfish to the raccoon, this time our friend Ben opted for three comets at $2.99 each. They were very attractive in their own right—brilliant red and white—and will make a nice show in the water garden if they survive. And if they don’t have the good sense to hide out in the section of clay pipe our friend Ben has positioned in the bottom of the water garden for their protection, well, our friend Ben will head out for replacements once the raccoon has moved on. Assuming, of course, that it shows up again this year. Perhaps a miracle will happen and it won’t, but our friend Ben is not counting on it. We can’t help but feel after all these years of depradation that it sees the raccoon equivalent of golden arches looming large over our deck door, and feels compelled to stop in for a “Big Rac” (or ten) on its way to its ultimate destination.

Now, our friend Ben and Poor Richard definitely “made out” (in the words of a local PA expression for getting a great deal that still stuns our friend Ben after all these years of living in the area, since in my native South making out has one meaning, and one meaning only) in terms of getting great plants and fish. But the real coup of the day was Silence’s. You may recall from “Gazing ball grief” that when our friend Ben headed out to find a replacement for the smashed gazing ball, I discovered to my horror that the price of these handmade lawn ornaments had risen to $60 for even the plainest silver ball. Gack!!! This seemed excessive, to say the least, and Silence and I resigned ourselves to doing without. But Silence remembered seeing gazing balls for sale at Aquatic Concepts in previous years, and obviously, she hadn’t entirely abandoned hope. As it turned out, she not only found a silver gazing ball, she found a silver gazing ball on sale for $22—and it was stainless steel, so even if wind blows it off the pedestal again, it’s safe from harm. Go Silence!!! 

Once Richard had rushed off to add his new plants to his own water garden, Silence went out and positioned her treasure on the seagreen pedestal while I set up our water gardens. I’d already hosed out the containers, positioned them on the deck and in the yard (coveniently masking the unsightly concrete septic-tank cap), and filled them with water from our well, allowing it to reach air temperature. (One great advantage of a well—no need to wait for chlorine and other toxins to evaporate in order to avoid fish death.) I’d positioned the section of clay pipe in the bottom of the deck water garden for the fishes’ protection. Then I harvested the extra anacharis from the indoor fishtanks and added it to the two outdoor water gardens. (Anacharis is an underwater oxygenator, providing both shelter and much-needed oxygen to the snails and goldfish. In an aquarium setting, it grows rapidly and frequently needs to be thinned out.)

Next, I postioned the dwarf papyrus’s pot on top of the clay pipe (which, I should note, is on its side in the bottom of the water garden), put the pots of parrot feather and floating heart on the bottom of the deck water garden and the variegated cattail and full-size papyrus in the second water garden, and added snails to both water gardens. I floated the water lettuce on the surface of the deck water garden (soon there will be offsets to add to the other water garden and share with Richard as well as our next-door neighbor Steve, who has a series of in-ground water gardens, and our good friend Delilah, whose water gardens are amazing). And I retrieved two clumps of dwarf water hyacinth from the greenhouse water garden and put one in each of our outdoor water gardens (soon enough, there will be plenty of those to share as well).

While all this was going on, I’d floated the plastic bag with the three goldfish in the deck water garden so the water temperature in the bag could gradually come to match the temperature of the water in the half-barrel. Once all the plants were in place, I opened the bag and let the goldfish swim out into their new home. That was it for the day! Everybody seemed happy and healthy. Our friend Ben enjoyed the happy scene before heading out to the veggie beds to harvest red Romaine lettuce, arugula, scallions, and some garlic mustard growing near the compost bins for our dinner salad. 

In case you’re wondering, no, we don’t add anything electric to our water gardens. We find that, just as with indoor aquariums, the appropriate mix of sub-surface oxygenator plants, plenty of other plants, snails, and a few fish (emphasis on few—they need lots of room to breathe), creates a balance that needs no interference from us apart from removing fallen leaves from the water’s surface. We’ve never had any problems (if you don’t count the *&%$#@!!! raccoon), and our water gardens have always been beautiful and lush. Algae has never been an issue for us, either, but our water gardens are shaded, which may account for it, or it may just be that fish-snail-oxygenator-plant balance that’s taking care of things.

Whatever the case, our friend Ben can’t imagine a less troublesome, more gratifying thing than a half-barrel water garden. (Of course, we feed the goldfish, but sparingly.) Confession: We use the molded plastic half-barrel liners for our water gardens rather than wooden barrels. They’re lightweight, unobtrusive, and indestructible.

What if you’d like to set up your own water garden, but don’t have a wonderful business like Aquatic Concepts nearby? Our friend Ben recommends a fabulous and all-too-tempting online business, Arizona Aquatic Gardens, to you all. Arizona is rather a far stretch from our Pennsylvania home, but we’ve always gotten deliveries from Arizona Aquatic Gardens quickly and in perfect shape. Their plants, shrimp, freshwater clams, fish, and etc. simply cannot be beat! Visit them at www.azgardens.com and see for yourself!