LILY MONSTER

 Whilst the lilies are blooming in the posts and looking fabulous, down in the pond lurked a different kind of lily. A monster Lily!  A giant of a water lily which had grown SO huge its roots had lifted up the pump and its leaves covered every square inch of surface water.  It was so enormous there were far too many leaves to sit  flat so they grew upright and sat above the surface. It was a regular forest of   leaves! I wish I'd taken a photo of such congestion!

It was time for Chris to don on his waders and to go into battle!  It was a massive undertaking and he had to cut off sections of the monster root system in order to  be able to lift them out.  Sadly, this was when he discovered that he had mistakenly picked up the old leaky waders - not the shiny new pair!  He filled 5 wheelbarrows (2 of which were very large wheelbarrows) with its weighty root system. All of the barrows were too heavy for me to lift. 

Normally Chris rehomes plants but on this unique occasion, he decided that the compost heap was deserved along with invading Lysimachia & Symphytum - much of which I had removed from around the pond margins.

Once removed, a massive clear up job ensued, the pond was topped up and the muddy water is being allowed to settle and clear before the pump is switched back on.  The last job of the day was to remove a dying Acer Platanoides columnar so we has laft a bit of an unwanted gap around the pond margin.

Upon hearing of yesterday's exploits, we were contacted by our neighbours.  To cut a long story short, we invaded the compost heap and retrieved most of the water lily root sections filling large numbers of plastic trugs, loaded them into a car for rehoming in their newly dredged lake!!  The monster lives on!  We look forward to James sharing pictures of its new home.