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By Steve Ingalls, Standard-Times correspondent
Linda and Russell Quintin, of North Dartmouth, have a flair for cultural mosaics.
Soon, a Blackfoot Indian ceremony
--
her sister Theri's wedding -- will be held in their spacious front yard. Mrs. Quintin's family has ancestral ties to the Blackfoots and her sister Theri has decided to honor those ties in her wedding. According to Mrs. Quintin, guests dressed in authentic tribal costumes will mingle among teepees and build the stone "Circle of Happiness" in which Theri and her fiancee will be married.
Not all the guests will be decked out in Indian garb, however.
Close to two dozen Koi will witness the occasion from the waters of their new home, an elaborate Japanese Koi fish pond the Quintin's recently built close to the house on a small rise overlooking the grassy half-acre expanse of their front yard.
And from its perch on the edge of the pond a statue of Buddha will serenely survey the entire affair. The Quintins are not Buddhists but though the statue appropriately decorative.
Mrs. Quintin reached into the pond and gently splashed the surface. From amongst zebra grass, pheasant tail and water hyacinth seven Koi with diaphanous fins and tails appeared in a dazzling array of crimson, gold, yellow, white and blue.
"I was drawn to the koi," said Mrs. Quintin, "because of their exotic colors and friendly nature. They swim right up to you. They'll nuzzle your hands and let you pet them, like a cat or a dog."
The family members whohelped the Quintins build the pond were all accorded to privelege of naming a koi, she said. "See the big yellow one? That's Rambo. And there's Keno, Angel, Mikey, Lucky, Casper and Koi-Toi. And at last count, we had 15 babies."
Mrs. Quintin always wanted a fish pond. "We bought the house three years ago, and I had the project in mind since we moved in," she said.
"We hired a landscaper to do the project for us, but he pulled out at the last minute. We didn't know the first thing about putting in a fish pond. All we had was a 28-page booklet to go by," Mrs. Russell said.
"And some common sense," said Edmond Larocque, Mrs. Quintin's father.
Working with their parents, the Quintin's stripped off nearly 1,200 square feet of lawn, trucked in 20 cubic yards of loam, 10 cubic yards of cedar bark mulch, and a pallet of stones. overall cost of the project: around $5,000.
"We learned a lot by trial and error," said Mr. Quintin. "After getting the 500-gallon (polyethylene plastic) pond shell where we thought we wanted it, we built the earth up around it. We discovered the pond was too far away from the pump and we couldn't move it because it was already wired, so we had to start over and move the pond closer."
"We shoveled all that material by hand," added Mrs. Quintin. "One spadeful at a time. The whole thing took a good month and a half to finish. We worked on it every day."
The cost of the project? About $5,000, Mrs. Quintin reticently discloses.
Both she and her work the graveyard shift. She is a certified nurse's aide at The Oaks. He's a chemical processor making silver emulsions for film at Polaroid.
When they get home in the morning, tired from being up all night but too wired to hit the rack right away, the Quintins pass a few hours working outside. Then, before retiring, they sit
by the pond watching the resplendent koi swirl through the water.
"Sitting here in the afternoon watching these guys is the most relaxing part of our day," Mr. Quintin said. "I'm glad we went ahead with the idea."
The kidney-shaped pond lies surrounded by aromatic cedar mulch. A wide border of angular granite stones set in mortar rings the pond. A small waterfall cascades gently into the pond, and a miniature painted pagoda nearby offers shade to birds that might come to drink.
Tiger grass, juniper, day lilies and Japanese dwarf maples dot the area. A bluestone slab footpath leads from a wrought iron bench nearby to the edge of the pond. A series of 28 low lamps lie tucked among the plantings and around the pond's perimeter.
Stocking this handsome pond with such exotic creatures could have been a costly affair. While a single prize breeding Koi can fetch as much as $20,000, the Quintin's fish cost far less.
"Rambo, our big guy, came to us for $40," Mrs. Quintin said. "The others were less than that. The price really is dictated by individual size and coloring."
When cold weather sets in, the Quintin's will install a defroster ball into the pond to keep it from freezing all the way to the bottom.
"When the water temperature drops below 50 degrees, the fish will go to the bottom. They'll stay there through the winter, feeding on algae. Then, when the water warms in the spring, they'll return to the surface," Mrs. Quintin said.
Mrs. Quintin is not looking forward to winter. "We're outdoor people, warm-weather people," she said. "We hate cold weather. And each year, we hate it more. Eventually we'll move to someplace warm, like Florida. Wherever we go though, we'll take these guys with us. We'll definitely have a Koi fish pond wherever we are. It's a source of relaxation we wouldn't want to be without."
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