Japanese Koi

Although we are all being encouraged to let our lawns die and replant with more drought tolerant, it is easier said than done. Our big front lawn is dead, but taking it out would be a massive job, replacing it with plants, even drought tolerant ones, would take more water than the lawn did and the leech field for the septic system is under it somewhere but we're not sure of the exact location and don't want to find out the hard way. We are currently hoping that if it rains this winter, the lawn will come back.

Dana, on the other hand, has a small front lawn and a driveway almost as big as the lawn. Taking out a lawn, even a dead one, is not an easy feat, but she did that, reducing it to three piles of dirt and dead grass. She got a neighbor who, with Will's help, loaded everything into his pickup truck and took it to the dump. 

Since then, with some help from OilMan, she has put down weed cloth, had rocks and gravel of varying sizes, delivered and dumped in the driveway, and made a "rock river". She has worked tirelessly to get the remaining rocks out of the driveway to make way for a load of dirt which was delivered today. 

While Jim waited for the dirt, Will, Oilman and I went with her to a nursery which specializes in ponds and pond plants, Japanese koi fish, and conifers, which was her goal. While she looked at every pine, spruce and fir in the place at least four times, Will and I wandered off to look at the fish ponds containing koi from minnow size all the way up to giants like those in my blip for today. The prices for live koi are not minnow size. Specimens 
half the size of these were selling for $100. These were not for sale.

There were other big fish in there, and I took lots of pictures of them, but in the end I chose this one because the way the fish were swimming in a circle head to tail reminded me of a Japanese design, the bubbles were fun and the reflections, to my eye at least, hinted at some sort of mythical sea dragon.

I'm sure Dana will now be working tirelessly to shovel dirt out of her driveway to make way for the mulch….