Them neighbor girls helped me clean the lily pool Saturday. Last weekend I offered to dig a flower bed adjacent to the lily pool and get some flowers for them to plant in it for their mom in honor of Mother’s Day. Kari had mentioned to me how she likes looking out Rebecca’s bedroom window and seeing the two goldfish swimming around. Dad built the lily pool for Mom for Mother’s Day when I was about Li’l r’s size. I’ve been working on cleaning it up since the weather warmed and it was beginning to look better. Since A&R were amendable to my scheme, I worked on making a small bed in a low area where there used to be a Russian olive tree back in the day. There was still a little of the rotted stump I had to get rid of. Somewhere along the line my mother put some rocks in that area and I left those. It was a modest bed, less than 3’X4′, but I worked it up pretty good so that by the time Saturday rolled around it was ready for the three plants I bought: a chocolate flower, a butterfly flower and a salvia. All three are low-water types. We each planted one. I went first to show them how it should be done, then they each took their turn. We added a nice piece of flint about the size and shape of a volleyball we filched from a bed next to the house where it couldn’t be seen.
We had a pump running in the lily pond while we were planting the flowers. Abigail had transferred the goldfish to a tub full of water. Besides removing as much crud as we could, we planted a new lily. Of the three lobes of the clover-shaped pool, only two had lilies in them and they were both white, so I got a pink one for the vacant spot. Next year I’ll remove one of the white ones and replace it with a yellow one. I’ve learned that water lilies need to be divided, sort of like other types of lilies and iris, etc. These had not, of course, and had metastasized for years.
While we were working on the pool, one of the two goldfish jumped out of the tub. I didn’t notice it until it was just about gone. Perhaps it thought the tub too confining, or maybe it was just showing off for the other goldfish, but it came real close to becoming an ex-goldfish, which would have been disappointing since there are only two and we’ve had that one for several years. It seems to have survived its close shave.
Our dry, Jykll and Hyde weather continued this week. We had some beautiful mornings that made this old sinner glad to be alive but by mid-afternoon the wind would start blowing so hard it made me want to find some small, meek fellow and beat the tar out of him just for spite. Nevertheless, we and the rest of Amarillo kept up our flower planting. Between the flowers we planted last year that are showing out so well this year and the inspiration we got from the gardening class we took, we just can’t help ourselves. We even moved the chimney liners Joyce had used to plant morning glories in from the garden to the backyard and planted impatiens in them in the hope of a little color back there. I’m at the point where I’m ready to stop planting and see if we can get what we’ve planted so far to survive. No doubt we’ll want to plant more things next spring and we’ll have more experience with different flowers by then, some good, some bad, but edifying either way.
I saw a pair of Mississippi kites Saturday, the first I’ve seen this year. They’ll stay around till fall. The ducks have abandoned us because the moss in the pond took over. I’m just speculating about that, but regardless we haven’t seen them all week. I think they prefer open water they can swim in. When I get a chance, I’ll see if can rake the moss out so maybe they’ll come back.
I love love love my Mother’s Day present 🙂