I have written before about our little pond, which sits nestled next to an ancient granite “patio”, which appears to have been constructed before people even used that term. The patio was built from the granite formerly quarried on site; the pond was constructed out of plastic. At the present time most of the pond is obscured by the beautiful red Japanese maple that we planted, as it turns out, far too close to both the pond and the sidewalk leading to our house. Despite all that, the tree is safe. It’s beauty makes it exempt from the woodman’s ax.
The pond itself often brings to mind a line I remember Jeff Goldblum delivering in the first Jurassic Park: “Life will find a way”. Somehow, despite our almost total (if benign) neglect of the pond (we do not feed the fish; we remove only a fraction of the load of leaves that fall in it each year; we never check the pH, etc. ) life goes on in the little pond. Each spring one or more frogs emerge from the depths, where they no doubt have spent the winter deep in the muck created by the aforementioned leaves. Fish appear too. The snails we introduced years ago to clean up the algae live on as well, still doing their job after so many years. Vegetation grows in profusion. In fact, the lily pad we have in there now will have to be removed soon. The last time we let one go this long we found, when we removed it, that it took up almost half the volume of the pond. As to the frogs, one of whom is pictured below basking among the lily pad leaves, there is an enduring mystery. Are these the same frogs that grew from the tadpoles we seeded more than 10 years ago? Or are they descendants, and if so, why have we never seen another tadpole? How do they survive? In all these years I’ve never seen a frog eat a single thing, though I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time watching them.
Whatever the answers to these less than profound questions (I’m sure Google would know), the annual rebirth of our little pond is always a welcome occurrence. Besides seeing the frog today (which, truth to tell, I first saw a few days ago) I also spotted a goldfish (first sighting this year) grazing around near the surface. Their survival is even more astounding. I know they are a long lived species, but their ability to live in what looks like pretty adverse conditions is remarkable
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