Blue Pickerels, Bees and Small Blessings

  Meandering about the hillside today enjoying the warm weather, my sister-in-law and I noticed that most of the pond plants had met their demise with the recent cold spell.  The water hyacinths looked pretty bad indeed!  Their leaves were all shriveled and brown.  A few were obviously blooming when the temperatures dropped below freezing. The flowers were still there but were now a brown, slimy mess instead of the lovely purple that they usually are. Overall, the pond looks bad...really bad and smelled worse!  As soon as I get caught up on other chores, the thing will receive one last, good cleaning before I let it rest for winter. The dragonfly larvae will hunker down among the roots of the water lilies and hyacinths and ride out the cold weather.

  With all the brown in the garden, the lone blue pickerel bloom stood out like a sore thumb.  Why this plant survived is beyond me.  Granted it was a pathetic specimen of a bloom, it was still a bright spot in the midst of yuck! It was perfect for the occasion.  The flower was all that was needed.  On closer inspection, I found that Cynthia and I were not the only ones who found the flower.  A bee was working the pollen to find a bit to eat.  This brought up another question.  How did that bee survive the freeze?  

  These occurrences made me ponder the odds of coincidences.  That lone bee was out buzzing about the garden in search of a food source and came across the lone bloom.  How unusual is that?  It was sort of like it was meant to be.  God knew His critter would be needing a bit of nourishment and popped that flower into bloom.  Hmmm?  Yep, just like He knows when we need spiritual nourishment, it is always there.  We just need to look around. Blessings abound where we least expect.

The Purple Pond!

The Frog Pond is just your every day normal pond but with a few plants added for aesthetic value.  Each year some odd plant will come into my possession and if it is able to withstand soggy roots, will wind up in the pond.  The small pond has Irises, Elephant Ears, Water Lilies, Water Hyacinths and a bunch of Blue Pickerels.  I like the assorted plants and usually there is a vast variety of colors.  Not this summer!  For some odd reason only one yellow Water Lily has bloomed..all the rest of the plants are blooming in shades of purple!  My Frog Pond has truly turned into a Purple Pond!

Earlier in the spring I had taken a picture of the Wisteria blossoms that had fallen in the Frog Pond.  Those floating petals had coated the entire surface of the pond.  It looked like a carpet of purple!  Now the blooms are higher but still in shades of purple!  The Water Hyacinths are taking over the pond but the blooms are so beautiful that I hate to discard the plants.  It is rare that I see these blooming so profusely and I am quite sure that a good many will have to soon find their way to the compost pile.  Hopefully, none will be blooming at the time as I will absolutely never be able to trash such a pretty plant!

The Blue Pickerel, itself, is multiplying like mad and I am beginning think that I am going to have to "share" a bit of this or it will be destined to the compost pile as well.  Mark bought me one tiny root earlier this year but now the stuff has outgrown its section of the pond and is spilling over on top of the water lilies!  This is the plant of choice of the dragonfly nymphs as they climb from the water to make their transformation from water bound critters to those that have freedom of flight.  The stems of the Blue Pickerel are tall and fit the bill well as a hanging spot for the nymphs.   Obviously, the bumblebees and honeybees like the Pickerels as well as the dragonflies!   

I keep thinking that it would be a beautiful sight to have the pink, yellow and white Water Lilies, the deep violet Irises and the yellow Elephant Ears all blooming amid the Water Hyacinths and Blue Pickerels but for some reason, they are not.  None but one..one lone yellow Water Lily made its debut and that is it!  Still, I am happy with my Purple Frog Pond!