Ponds, Plants, and missing Kitty

This is a picture of our porch pond in the spring. We haul it out of the shed every spring, put it on the front porch, check for leaks, fill it with water, and bring the goldfish out for the summer. Then we buy just a couple of plants to keep the water oxygenated and to make the whole thing interesting. We used to put a pump/fountain in it each year, but I have replaced it twice in six years and just never got around to the needed third replacement this year. Which is a bit sad because I really miss the sound of the moving water. You will note that there are only three plants in this thing. The taller plant, a water hyacinth, is the one that gave us these awesome flowers.
This is what it looks like now. See all those plants? Yeah, they propagate like crazy all summer long. There are now seven of the water lettuce having started with two. I also have four of the water hyacinth, of which there had been one. Yeah, there is a reason these are classified as invasive non-native plants in a lot of places. I don't worry about them invading, since I keep them contained, plus they won't winter over here. The first fall, I brought the whole pond in to keep it gurgling away inside. Well, that didn't work very well for several reasons. DTE's cat, Kitty, tried to drink out of it, but she fell in. I was not too crazy about a wet, long-haired cat running around the house. The next thing we learned was that Kitty did not like plants in her water dish! She would grab the plants and drag them all over the house, beating them up in the process. No matter how many times we put them back, or reduced the number of plants see if that helped, we would find bedraggled water plants somewhere in the house shortly after returning it to the water. All of that, plus the dogs banging the heavy ceramic pot into the wall and splashing water all over every time they were playing tag together, led to putting the pond pot in the shed, getting a bowl for the goldfish, and donating all the plants to the girl's high school biology lab.


The next fall when I brought the fish back in they had outgrown their inside bowl. Since I wouldn't want to live in a fish bowl myself, I kind of figured they might not either. (Like a goldfish really cares?) Well, I also didn't want to have a boring bowl to look at all winter, so I gussied up the new one a bit.

 

One of my tasks for today was to finally move the fish inside for the winter. I guess I could leave a plant or two in the bowl this year since Kitty isn't here to go crazy. I would really rather have her and no plants in the fishbowl. I would even be happy with water plants being drug all over the house. Besides, who is going to pet the goldfish this winter without her here?