No wonder...

Down below the porch, past the 'snow in summer'...

 something lovely is happening...

...the water lilies have begun to bloom!

I started with 1 plant about 7 years ago and each year a few more blooms come on...

...this year I've already counted 9 more buds plus these 3 that are in bloom...

I got right down to water level to see if I could find any frogs but didn't see any today.

What I did see was the feathery fronds of parrot weed...

Loads of honey bees loving the floating roots of one of the pond plants...

...and then I spotted this...

Do you know what it is?

Here, have a closer look...

This is the casing of a dragon fly nymph.

They can take 1 - 3 tears to hatch out of the water, climb up onto a leaf stalk

and slowly emerge out of this strange looking case.

It's called 'incomplete metamorphasis'.

They skip the pupa stage and go from egg, to nymph to adult.

Then they dazzle us all summer with their air acrobats on the iridescent wings of a fairy.

Isn't nature simply amazing!?

I wish I had seen it emerging.

Anyway back to the beautiful lilies...

It's no wonder artists have been smitten to paint these lovelies for thousands of years!

Of course some of the most famous...

Claude Monet.

Shizhizhang.

Chinese Painting

Limoges platter.

This is one of my favorite images of all time...a painting by Charles Courtney Curran 1888...

So get out the paints, pastels or in my case, the camera!

Consider, the lilies!



Back in the saddle!

Whew!

It's been a while since I've been on line due to crashing hard drives

but I'm back with the further musings and wanderings of a farmlass...

Lets see...where was I?... Oh yes...

I had been sitting out by the pond taking pictures of frogs and water lillies,

and so a life continues.

We put this pond in about 4 years ago after one of our goats died and we had to have a hole dug.

When our friend came over with his digger, we thought why not get him

to dig a hole for a pond and hence Licorice Lake was born (the deceased goat was called Licorice).

A word of warning to any pond virgins out there.

Do your research!

We've learned so much about why not to have a pond.

Algae being the biggest problem since our pond is in full sun.
We were also given 5 large goldfish and ended up, at one point, with about 200 offspring!
We now enjoy it the way nature intended and don't fuss with it anymore.
Anyway, the fish population has worked itself out, the plants are healthy
and there is a lot of life in the water including frogs, dragonflies, water beetles and
numerous other creepy, crawly bugs.
The show stoppers this time of year are the water lilies...
Enjoy!