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The Austin Pond Society held its second meeting of the year on February 18th  at the usual place at Zilker Gardens Clubhouse.

As usual, we were treated to a wonderful spread of Pulled pork sliders and other delights. Everything always tastes so good it requires so much effort to not totally pig out or at the very least, go back at least a couple of times for refills.

The meeting opened with the various Chairs giving reports of the activity they had  through the past month. This was followed by Steve from the Hill Country Gardens talking to us about pond preparation for the upcoming Spring. He especially emphasized the need to clean out the ponds of all accumulated leaves and debris or there is a good chance that come the warmer weather, the muck in the bottom of the ponds will start to give off ammonia which is definitely not good for the fish.

He also talked about potting lilies and lotus plants and went into some detail on how to do it. Steve took time to answer a whole bunch of questions on various subjects including string algae. He gave several recommendations on how to treat it.

For everyone’s information, The Hill Country Gardens will be holding its Annual Plant sale March 16 starting at 9:00 am. This will be followed on April 27 with the Lilly Blossom Festival which is always a lot of fun.

The next meeting will be held at the same place, Zilker Gardens on March 18. St Patrick’s Day is Sunday, March 17 so the theme for the food will be Irish, Loaded Baked Potatoes, Green Salad, Irish Soda Bread and Irish Cake. Sounds absolutely DELICIOUS. The speaker for the evening will be Erin Cord, Park Ranger with Wildlife Austin and her theme will be, “How to turn your garden into a wildlife habitat“.

FYI, the clocks change on March 10. Remember “Spring forward – Fall back” and you can’t go wrong.

March 30th is the APS membership drive. Jeanne is still looking for volunteers to man the tables and solicit volunteers at a couple of different pond supply houses around town.

Watch the video of the entire presentation for the evening. The first is the Austin Pond Society meeting.

The second is the talk by Steve of Hill Country Gardens.

Apologies for the quality of the video. That guy behind the camera needs a lot of work…