pond in winter

This is what my ponds look like in this winter weather. BEV

Here's mine - BRRRRR!! Dax

It is cold out there today.

Lucille,

it has been too cold for me to sit outside - are you still sitting out there with your chimnea going?

Carolyn

Beautiful pictures!! Mine looks about the same, maybe with a few extra dog tracks in the snow. I keep forgetting to take a picture in the 10 minutes of daylight I have once I get home from work. Maybe this weekend. Besides going outside to check on the heaters ever so often (which are thank goodness working for the most part) I don't see it much. Thank you for sharing the pictures. Cute kitty!

Hi Carolyn, "Happy almost Winter Solstice." I have the Chimenea agoin most of the time now. I took a kerosene heater out in the "TeePee a few days ago. It warmed up pretty

Friday,at 5:00PM, when I do the Herbal Winter Solstice ceremony, DH always wants us to dance naked out back in the snow! I have some friends over every year to celebrate it, but so far we ALL refused to do that part of the ceremony☻We mostly walk around out by the pond and gather Herbs to bring inside for the energy and to help woe the Sun back for Spring growing season.

Have a great Christmas,
Luille

Art_I hope you will post a pic or two here. I just love paw prints in the snow☺Here is "Stretch" again going out to the pond for a nice cold drink of water.

I got home from work early today, so I got out to take a picture! Here's my pond right now--it just started snowing and it is snowing hard! It started about 45 min ago...I'll go take a pic again in a couple hours. Pardon my cords..they're everywhere because of my heater "crisis."

Art-

How pretty! I'll bet it is gorgeous in the summer.

Carolyn

Art...your heater must doing a good job of it,an ice free pond in Colorado, WOW! I really like the shape of your pond☺

♪☼Have a Joyous Holidy and a blessed New Year everyone☼♪☺

Thank you! I finished it in September...so I don't really know how pretty it will be in summer, but I cannot wait to see it!! I already have plans for another pond on the terracing in the top right of the picture.
I took this picture about an hour and a half after the first one and my ghostly dog jumped in. :)
You too, posy and to everyone else! I'm headed out on a plane early tomorrow to visit my family. Very excited.

There is apond under all that snow with a heater and 5 goldfish

OK Aged,I hahalf believe you 'cause DGers don't lie, but come Canada in the Springtime,you will have to prove it to me☺☺☺Happy Holidays! The pic is quite beautiful in a pristine way as long as I dream of the fish under there ,safe, and cozy, in the heated water below. They better behave themselves when we can't see what they are up to.;)

All our snow has melted and gone,practically overnight:( We did not have the White Christmas we were exzpectin after all....sigh...maybe next year☺

I showed all my koi the pictures of your ponds in the snow and they started shivering. =)
Rich

LOL! If my fish lived in Sarasota,they would be shivering too! Fortunately, they are fish that do better in cold weather climate and are not that happy in the hot months when the water temp gets in the 80degree range. They get quite sluggish. During hot summer months I have been known to throw ice cubes in the pond just to give them a break☺I have a new Digi Camera and this summer I hope to get a pic or two of them pushing the ice cubes around. It is hilarious to watch☺

Ok, I can't with fir pocs!
Rich

Snow last night made things look pretty cool.

Another View

Beautiful photos of a beautiful pond, shrubbs. There is certainly a lot to recommend zone 5b climates for every season, but somehow the winter scenes seem the most beautiful of all.

Thanks. I love all the seasons so it is hard for me to pick which one is the best. My wife doesn't like winter, but has gotten better since we got married. We are only about 10 mins. or so away from the Susquehanna River and half way between Harrisburg and Williamsport. PA quite a bit of scenery everywhere!

Shrubbs,

Absolutely gorgeous and so natural looking too. Posy lives down the street from me and neither one of us are too far from the Susquehanna either - only we are closer to the NY border where the Chemung River empties into the Susquehanna.

I agree 100% with you - quite a bit of scenery. We are fortunate where we live.

Carolyn

Thank you for the compliments.

That pond is actually in front of the office of Shaffer Landscapes, Inc. (the company I work for). I love walking by it everyday. Once in awhile you find a frog or two. Here is a link to our website:

http://shafferlandscapes.com/

My wife and I love hiking all over the area. We have spent a lot of time visiting the PA Grand Canyon and World's End State Park. One of these days we will branch out and get some hiking done in the north west of the state.

That brings back some long,long ago memories. When we married In 1966, my husband and I spent our honeymoon at World's End in cabin 1. We used to go down there all the time,year after year, to picnic,camp, and go trout fishing. We must have hiked the Loyalsock Trail a hundred or more times.

Just below World"s End is a small,not too well maintained Park called Dry Run. There are 2 huge Pavillions with rock fireplaces, all built by CC camps as were the cabins at World's End.You can get to High Knob and Canyon Vista that way too although the road is not too good.

We enjoyed the PA Grand Canyon too for the scenic view.

Your post makes me want to jump in the truck and head on down☺

I just visited their site and they have some of the most beautiful water garden pics I have seen yet. Thanks for sharing.

Posyblossom Here is a picture if the pond after we had a thaw.

Winter wonderland Canada agedgardener☺ beautiful place you are in. I know I would love life in Canada. The sound of snow,the Northwest Territories, Yellowknife.

We are on the migration path of Canadian Geese and when they go North, I always want to fly North too☺ I have been to British Columbia on vacation once.

Thanks for the pic☺after a thaw no less☺now that is some serious snow☺

This is my pond with the water level down from the pump being left on for the gases and oxygen exchange. I do not have to keep trying to keep it open. The gap between the ice and water does the job and it sounds wonderful,just like a crystal clear sound of a waterfall☺

this is the whole pond encases in thick ice.

This is the waterfall totally encased in ice,but water is still running inside the ice,forming an opening to the pond.

Darn, I had to turn the pump off for the first time this winter. I always hate to do it,but the water level was getting too low. It is only 18F out there right now,but it has been warming up to 30+ during the day. I do miss seeing my fish every day. This year is different than any other year because the ice is the thick,white kind that you can't see through.

P.I wouldn't mind a shorter winterosy Ireallt don't think you would like to live here! We have to shovell all that snow to get ouy of the house and driveway. Someimes we have to have o snowplw get us out. this weather can go on until march and even april.

we have had a couple of winters over the years like that Aged. Once,we had to be dug out, couldn't get the doors open to get out of the house and it was like walking through a snow tunnel when we did escape. I jumped off the porch roof into a big snow pile. I loved it. Those storms shut down all the businesses and we had to walk to work in the tire marks made by the big snow equipment. I found it totally enjoyable☺.

I love the pictures you post here of Canada winter at your place☺

This is my first winter with a pond, It is totally frozen over too, Not as pretty as yours though!! I just finished building it this early summer so I dont have a pump and filter yet or fish, But I want to do that this spring. Its a small one really, about 8 ft. x 5 ft. Do you all think this is big enough for Koi, Shabunkins, Or should I go with goldfish?
Also what are your experiences with filters? I mean the best types, I kinda like the skimmer filter idea, since it can be hid easily and can suck the leaves off the surface as they fall in before they sink. I am working on a water fall. In your opinions are they as effective as the larger above ground types?
Dont mean to hijack your thread, Just wanted to ask some of you pro's. Thank you in advance for any suggestions you might have. Kelly

Hi Kelly. I don't use a skimmer box,but I must say, I do like the idea of them.

I kept everything I did when I built my pond as cheap as I possibly could. I dug it out by hand,lined it with 4-6" of newspaper, bought a $168 Beckett Liner with , 30yr warranty,and bought a $25 Whiskey Barrel and a $15 liner for it to make into a Bio filter water fall. Mine is 1000gal pond which is a lot easier to maintain than a smaller size. It has three depth levels,3.5 to 2.5 to 1.5ft. Koi really need at least 3ft deep to be happy,but lots of folks have them at a more shallow level and they seem to do well. My pump is in the bottom of the pond and has a UV light attached to it which pretty much keeps the water clear and eliminates algae build up.The pump was $63 and pumps the water up through 1.5" tubing over the back of the barrel to create the water fall. I love the soothing feeling I get from skimming the pond by hand and the fish always follow it to feed from,which is very enjoyable to watch and helps tame them for hand feeding later on.

Shubunkins are a hardy Goldfish and could be a good choice to start with.

Good Luck with your pond and I hope you will keep us posted with the next stages of its evolution☺.

This is a 10+ yr. old Butterfly Shubunkin.

Thank you so much for the information, I am looking forward to this spring to get out there and get the pond going, I promise to keep yall posted as to how its going!!!

Hey posyblossom you must really love Cold! I am a beach girl at heart and just the thought of a long cold snowy winter makes me cringe. Two days with ice and snow here in North Central Texas and I want to go mad. However when we do have a little white it is beautiful and I like it for about a day or two at the most. Four inches of snow will shut down DFW area so we just have fun with it and then it is gone. Now if I lived up north I would love to teach my horses how to pull a sleigh. Ridin Naked in a Sleigh with quilts made from old wool suits keeping you warm. Now that would be a wonderful way to enjoy Winter Solstice and make your hubby happy! LOL That is if your not alergic to wool which I am. Oh well back to the beach I want to go. Not much wool need on a warm beach.
Oh bye george we ARE talking ponds here. Now do ya see how frazzled I get at looking at all that white stuff? OK here is my story:
Had an old hot tub and wanted to get rid of it. One warm January day six years ago while my Hubby was gone I decided to bury it in the ground and make a water garden.. So I started digging. And Digging. You can dig in this sand for days and never find a rock. Hubby came home to a very large hole and asked which horse had died. I told him if a horse had died I would have called someone Trust ME! Well seeing that I had dug this beastly hole he took it over and sunk the hot tub,added liner,pump,UV light and we have loved it! Our plans now are to inlarge it having the hot tub be the deep area. Why this thread got my attention was it seems like we always have to replace our pump in March every year. I need a pump that will run 24/7 ALL YEAR. The pumps have all been Beckett. We leave the waterfall running all winter so the fish are happy. Just wanted to know if Beckett is not the brand to use and why not. Sorry for the ramble and hope you folks are keeping warm up there.

ROTFLMHO☺☺What a story☺Ah WeedLady, I think you might have a bit of the Snowbirds in your soul☺That is exactly what my idea in how to make good use of a hot tub would be.

Mine are all submersible pumps and they are Beckett. I have three that are well over 10 yrs old and still pumping turnover of a thousand gallons every 2 hours. If yours are not holding up and you are not using them some of the time, you have to keep them submersed in a bucket of water as they are made to be kept in water all the time. I've had such great luck with everything Beckett,I can't imagine why they are not lasting for you.

Riding naked in a sleigh,over the River and through the Woods,to Grandmothers house we go! Yep!Sounds like my idea of paradise.There is something so satisfying to me about bundling up in a 40 F below coat,fake fur hat and nice comfy mittens, to me it is the most pleasant experience I know, I don much like summer,I hate to sweat and be prickly☺

Do you have any pics of your "winter" Hot Tub? I would love to see what it looks like.You can ramble in any time you feel like it because I certainly enjoyed your post☺

LU

What a great Shubunkin! My son and I were checking out some baby ones this past weekend, I love the colors.

Great story about the hottub! I envy your sandy soil, our backyard is very clay and a pain to dig in. One flower bed had so much clay in it, the mud was actually blue. We are surrounded by sandhills but somehow have clay soil in the backyard, sand in the front. Guess where I'm putting the pond?

I better get out the shovel now, this could take awhile...

Oh!Oh! A clay bottom pond,excellent choice. I lined my pond with 4" thick newspaper and under the liner it has turned to clay,something about the ink in the paper under pressure. It works great on any little deteriorating liner pin hole leaks because the clay seals them off. An added benefit is under the newspaper breeds tons of red worms that migrate up and over the edge and into the pond where the fish gourge themselves. It is fascinating to watch.

The Shubunkin above has become one of the most beloved,spoiled fish in my pond and he loves his veggies☺Keep us posted on how the pond develops and drink plenty of fluids and eat your Wheaties, sounds like you will need them before the job is done☺