I really stocked up on perennials this year. So much so, that I think I’ve just about cut my annual purchases in half. Here’s a few more new ones I want to share with you.

I have a shade garden across the far side of my backyard. The eastern half gets virtually no sun, just a little in the morning, and the western side gets about 2 hours of afternoon sun. So throughout these gardens I have Hostas, daylillies, bleeding hearts, irises, hydrangea, astibles, and every variety of coral bells I could find. That’s a LOT of green!

Sure, most of these things flower at some time during gardening season, but there’s still a lot of green foliage in between. So I wanted to jazz things up a bit.

Every year I get plenty of coleus to add color. I love coleus, but it’s only an annual in these parts. (I’ll get more into coleus on another date.) So I specifically looked for some perennials with variegated foliage and interesting colors to provide some contrast. Here’s what I found:

A light green and white leaf Calamint (pictured above). Specifically called Calamintha grandiflora “variegata,” it is a close cousin to the garden mint, but without the nasty spreading habit. This selection forms an upright, bushy mound of soft green leaves, splashed with creamy white. Pleasantly fragrant, its rosy-pink flowers are studded on short spikes among the leaves in mid summer. This will slowly spread to form a small patch. It is useful towards the front of the border (which is where I put it), or in a woodland setting among Hosta or ferns (perfect!). It’s also attractive to butterflies.

Next up is something called the Tasmanian Tiger or Spurge. A spectacular plant selected for its uniformly colored variegated foliage — leaves are grayish-green with clear white margins. Tall pale green stems support cream-white flowers with green bow-tie centers. It’s dependable color and texture looks great all season. A vigorous grower that tolerates heat and drought, it’s excellent for use in difficult spots where nothing else grows.

I also chose a flowering ground cover called Lithodora. Lithodora diffusa (specifically) is a hardy evergreen creeping ground cover originating in southern Europe and requiring only a little attention (Yay!). It can hug the ground very closely or mount upward to six inches or rarely as high as a foot. It spreads as a dark green mat that produces its first few bright azure blue flowers as early as March, but is really going to town blooming in May & June, continuing to bloom at intervals & less overtly up to Autumn's first frost. Check out that color!! Too cool, I had to have it!

Today we are getting some needed rain (Yes! I don’t have to water tonight), but Saturday and Sunday will be optimal for gardening, or ponding, which is what I’ll be doing.

My pond’s in need of great attention. I’ve been cleaning the filter daily and it’s time to vacuum out the sludge in the bottom. We’ll also be installing (or trying to install) a new waterfall this weekend. I’ll let you know how it goes.

And by the way, the “pregnant” fish – is still pregnant and hugging the bottom of the pond. I hope she lays those eggs soon, we’re referring to her as Brangelina at the moment …

Way back in March, I told my backyard pond story. If you missed it, you can find it in the archives. Today I'm going to get more into the story of my pond's primary inhabitants -- the fish.

Yes, I know I promo'd this yesterday as "Trouble in the Pond," and I'll get into that later. First a little background ...

We started out with a much smaller pond by buying a kit that included two plants and four fancy goldfish (Red Comets, to be exact). We added four more fish that first year -- fancy Shebunkins. Shebunkins are basically more colorful goldfish. They don't require additional care or specific water conditions like Koi, but they come in color combinations similar to the beautiful Japanese carp. Red, gold, silver, black, spreckled or paint, Shebunkins are every bit as beautiful, just not as expensive.

Anyway, the following year our fish gave us four babies that survived spawning season (the fish tend to eat their young, and since they give birth by the hundreds, this is not a bad thing). But before that, I went and bought four more, never thinking in a million years that they would breed!

So now we're up to 16 fish in a 240-gallon pond. (We upgraded to a bigger pond two years ago, because the fish were getting too big for our original pond.) Our biggest fish is almost a foot long from nose to tail tip (and since, she's so big and white, we call her "Moby"), and the other "original" fish are almost the same.

Well last summer, the fish got really busy in the new pond and as far as we can tell, we have about 30-32 fish now (it's hard to count accurately when they're all swimming around). Don't get me wrong, we totally enjoyed watching the tiny babies last year, especially at night. Our pond has three underwater lights, so at night we can spy on the fish and they don't really see us. When we first discovered them, they were only a few millimeters long. All survived the winter and are about 4-5 inches now.

This is all great, except having too many fish in a small pond is not good for them. We have to clean the filter twice as much (that's twice a week in prime summer months), because naturally, they make more waste. And, over the winter in January, I spotted a tiny white fish that must have been born sometime in December (isn't that against the rules of nature?), followed by the discovery just last month of a tiny black fish (the black ones are really hard to see) that was probably born the same time.

Now on to the Trouble in the Pond -- Just the other day I noticed one of our big white Comets (not Moby) looking particularly huge toward her tail section. I think she's pregnant!!! and it's only April (well, actually it's May as of today). In the past the fish waited at least until June to give birth, which means, this is just the first pregnancy of the season ...

I think I'll be having a fish sale this summer!