Green, Green, Go Away!

If you've visited us anytime in the last few weeks, you've seen the "green liquid monster" that was once our nice clean main display pond. Usually, at this time of year, you'd be able to see a quarter at the bottom of the three-foot deep pond, but NOT this year. Sigh.....what a mess.

It's actually hard to capture in a photograph just HOW green it is. If you look closely at the water coming over the waterfall though, you can see the pea-soup appearance that's been haunting us for the last month or so. The beauty of the Wood's Blue Goddess waterlily that's in the photo below is completely ruined by the green backdrop, but it does serve to show you how bad the problem has become.

What to do, what to do? You'd think a water garden center wouldn't have such a problem, but yes - even the "experts" get it wrong sometimes. The problem is - we don't yet know exactly WHAT it is that's the problem. We've been running the pump and filter 24/7, adding bacteria, working on increasing the amount of surface coverage by plants, and even relying on algaecides to help (something that's ALWAYS been a last resort for us to use), but nothing seems to be working. Tim even strapped on his chest waders one day and went scooping to see how much "litter" we might have built up on the bottom of the pond, but there wasn't ANYTHING!

Tim seems to think it's probably a combination of perhaps having too many fish (or at least ones that are too large for the system to handle anymore) and/or the odd weather that we've been having (it got way too warm too early in the season for the plants to get a good foothold on the amount of sunlight hitting the pond, as well as the constant influx of nutrient-rich rain that keeps "feeding" the algae).

Regardless of WHAT it is, after giving it a lot of thought, we've decided to do some renovation work to upgrade the mechanics of the pond. Sometime in the next few weeks, we'll be draining the pond down a little, ripping out the old skimmer box, and installing a new skimmer system that will allow us to use UV lights to help get the green under control (another last ditch effort, but one that should solve the problem once and for all).

Until then, we apologize for not setting the best example of how to create (and keep!) a nice crystal clear water garden. Some folks really don't mind the more "natural" appearance and we're happy about that, but we do realize that it's not the most popular option. We'll keep you updated on the progress of our renovation by blogging about the process as it unfolds. Hopefully, it will all be good news!

For now, we'll try to stop focusing on (and freaking out about!) the green monster. Instead, we'll leave you with a few photos of what we think are some of the pretty sights you can still enjoy if you visit us in the near future.