Well, I didn't expect the duckweed to be gone in one season, and I
sure haven't been disappointed. In fact, I've never seen the duckweed
looking so healthy. To those of you who may have tuned in late I
threw an air stone (attached to an air pump) in the middle of my
duckweed covered pond, thinking that the (minor) waves set up by it
would eventually prove detrimental to the duckweed. By late last year
it had cleared a "circle" about 20 feet in diameter, but now it looks
like only about 15 feet or so. I'm often asked if there are fish in
the pond, and there *were*, I saw some of them. But recently there
don't seem to be any. Grass carp (especially) might help control the
duckweed. To summarize, I looked into triploid (sterile) grass carp,
and not only do I have to get a permit for them, I have to take
measures that they don't escape into any other waters. Being as how
I'm only about two miles from the Suwannee River and the springs that
make my pond eventually flow into it, that kind of leaves me out.
Well, they don't flow into it directly, at least not above ground. The
overflow from the pond forms a tiny stream, which joins another
stream, which joins another, which then vanishes underground only to
resurface as a spring along the Suwannee. I am a (dry) cave explorer,
and have friends who actually put on SCUBA gear and dive in underwater
caves. As such, I am extremely reluctant to put any sort of chemical
in the water to control the duckweed, no matter how safe the
manufacturer claims it is. Anyway, my brother keeps telling me that
the duckweed is the sign of a healthy pond, so I'm not really worried.

So I've pretty much moved to the shed at the back pond. Now the
"shed" has sliding glass doors and an air conditioner and a few other
things that make it a kind of a "luxury shed." One day I'm parked in
front of one of the doors staring out at the pond through a pair of
binoculars looking at turtle heads poking up through the duckweed when
this blur appears out of focus in the binoculars. I put them down and
there is this hummingbird not a foot away staring at me. It wasn't
just a one time thing either, the hummingbird have been coming around
for about two weeks now, first hovering and looking in through one
door, then flying around to look in the other. It's a pair of
ruby-throated hummingbirds, the female coming by much more frequently
than the male.
..