The Leather Oaks Garden -- The Lameuse Street Era II

Oak Limbs and Small Ponds!

This Page Created on January 17th, 2008

A couple of years before the really huge branch fell from Grandaddy Oak, this modest size tree fork had separated itself from its smaller relation. Since there was no damage to the house, and only inconvenience to the yard, I relied on friends with chain saws to help themselves to the wood. This photo was made after Round One.
There were further cuts that whittled it away a little more. We decided to just leave what wasn't reasonable to handle alone, and it became a semi-permanent feature of the yard. If you've been to my main site, you may remember how many different posing sessions it has enjoyed!

This photo commemorates Pipe's first public appearance. The Piping Boy was a cast, verdigris bronze statue from Lily Pons, and seemed to be the right guy to play over the newly deepened Leather Oaks Pond. After that first disastrous cold winter, Mark and I got together and planned a much larger, deeper pond. He dug out the basic shape he wanted. Then I deepened it, and 17 bags of muscle-mixed Sackcrete later, had lined the whole thing with two inches of concrete to a finished depth of 16 inches. That thing's still there!

This photo was carefully staged to be just between blossoms. That's Pipe at the left. The water usually stayed remarkly clear, but at the cost of anacharis covering most of the surface

Despite the anacharis, there were fish, and they couldn't really hide! Well maybe not many visible in this photo, but dig the snail cleaning the anacharis!

A neighbor of my mother gave me this intriguing little plant, that I promptly stuck in the pond. Soon I had a pond full of them, much to the detriment of almost everything else.
I found out later that the spread of these by dumping from small ponds has become a major problem on public waterways.

The luxuriant vegetation surrounding the pond is what Mark called Trailing Daisies. It's one of those plants you only get to sell once, because it will freely spread as long and as far as you allow!

<	The good news about Trailing Daisies is that they do bloom profusely, even as late in the season as this photo.

Of all the photos from the Lameuse Street version of the Leather Oaks pond, this is one of my favorites. The water hyacinths are gone, replaced by more appropriate lilies.
Well, they're not in bloom just now, but they could be. In the background, next to the oak, you can just make out the remainder of that fork. If we head that way, I'll show you the last change I made at this place.

The female gardeners in the family always had huge collections of roses. Most of them seemed to be way more work than I could contract for, as my job required frequent travel. Someone suggested some of the old climbing roses as being more tolerant of neglect. A friend designed this mock ruin trellis for me, and a couple of years later, this is what it looked like.

CloseUp Photography has never been one of my strong points, but this photo really came out pretty well, I think! The link will take you back to the main Garden page.