Wednesday Vignette: Mulch

It's important to mulch the soil in spring to help with water retention during the summer.  Some people use bark or a manure mix of some sort.  My garden mulches itself because it knows how lazy I am.

Here we see skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) coming up through the camellia/magnolia petal mulch.
It pretty mulch falls everywhere, including the pond.  BTW, when they tell you to site your pond away from overhanging trees, they mean it. Also, when the pond guy recommends an automatic skimmer, you might want to do that.  On the other hand, going outside every morning before work to hand skim off all of the debris is also a fun exercise.

Here's the mulch/pond litter progression:  Spring begins with bright pink camellia petals covering everything.  Those are followed by magnolia petals and finally cherry blossoms.  Summer brings shedding bamboo foliage all season long which is followed in autumn by the falling leaves of the cherry, magnolia, and anything else the wind decides to blow in.

It's much better since the Italian plum no longer deposits fruit as well.  (The fruit was delicious but the tree wasn't well.)  Can you see the fish coming to investigate?
Wednesday Vignette is hosted by Anna at Flutter and Hum.  Click here to see her post and links to those of other participating bloggers.