The Immaculate Deception of Pond Life

Demure is an illusion in the world of small water bodies, deceiving the unsuspecting novice's imagination with delusions of tranquility.  The visitor's mind floats to peaceful places standing at the edge of a quiet water pond.  The keeper's peaceful places evaporated long ago in the world of aggressive pond plants, water conditioners, diseases, amphibian and fish maintenance, erosion, water evaporation, water quality, sludge removal, and empty pockets.  

I'm talking man-made natural ponds with no liners.  I did observe over a period of two years, a pickerel rush plant in a 12 inch pot set in the middle of a lined 12 foot round pond cover the entire surface...amazing, but today I'm talking about what I know...my pond.  It's been a love/hate relationship ever since day one.

This pond is dug out of clay with an uneven limestone bottom.  The mature bog area constantly sucks moisture from the pond, and I find myself topping off the water in the pond morning and evening to keep it a healthy level.  Fish are very high maintenance, so this pond is designed for frogs and birds, with a shallow entry side into the water, and three logs in the deeper parts that overlap the higher edges.  

Natural ponds, when balanced almost take care of themselves...BUT.........I'm looking at my pond and its water surface is only one fourth the size of its beginnings.  This was okay for a few years, but I'm losing much of my other plant life, amphibians, and water surface to the sweet flag and swamp rose.  These plants grow in the ground, and are a !#$&?% to remove.

I grab the newly purchased Silky Hayauchi pole saw that extends to cut the mightiest of tree limbs way up there in the stratosphere, compress it to the shortest still-too-long extension available, grit my teeth with the determination of a skinny tick running out of time, punch back all that negativity my mind is brewing up in retaliation, part leaves and pinch my shoulder blades right out of alignment sawing with the agility of arms screwed on backwards into that massive shelf of sweet flag tangled stems that has reached out over the quiet waters to obliterate anything in its path on its quest to seal the pond up tighter than salt on a slug.

My glove-less hands tell me blisters will be my reward as I repeatedly hack and jerk with a rake until those tangled masses begin to loosen their ironclad grip, and fling them one by one over my head with a splat onto the patio.  Next is drugging up that frog loving muck at the bottom from last fall's leaves, and wondering where an overflowing bucket of unkindly smells with absolutely nowhere to go is really supposed to go.  Looking out over those muddy waters, to the patio spewed with water logged plants that under normal circumstances would lack the power of locomotion, then down at the clutched bucket of swamp-stink, I'm mildly bemused by the desperation of it all.  

The miniature water lily's been given a new lease on life and basks in heavenly sunshine.  The swamp rose tightens its foothold defying me to come one step closer.  I pull out my handy dandy saw and a felco pruner, and try to figure out where the hell my feet are supposed to go so I can whittle that big bully back into submission.  Both knees refuse to cooperate, my feet trip on anything more than a quarter inch high, and my spry has been so totally fried.  I'm a disaster that's already happened.  There's nothing graceful with this autumn chick, but I'll complain no more until next time.

The top of the low rock wall has been removed, and all the resting arrow-headed flatworms lifted off the underside and dumped into a freezer bag.  Stepping stones are being laid on the bottom foundation of the wall to make pond care easier.  The sedge died out long ago...no completion for the swamp rose that now looks like six plants instead of one; and the remnants of the copper iris is pitiful.  Much work is left undone...my weekends will remain busy this month.  

I'm not exactly a lover of six legged wing machines up close and in my face after dark.  Being hit in the middle of the forehead by an unknown in that dark void once sent me rushing for the back door with arms flaying at everything I couldn't see.  This fall I'll once again be able to brave the night spider webs with my broken broom stick, sneak out to the pond edge with flashlight in hand and watch all those little monsters that live at the bottom  of the pond emerge after dark...a truly mesmerizing event that has left me with a desire to NEVER wade into any kind of pond forever.

Run - Baby - Run!!!

Take a walk into my kitchen...

Knife Tracks on Pizza Pan

Perfection ~ Imperfection

The Spices of Life

The Misadventures of a Bogus Master Gardener

She's trying to learn to embrace imperfection...she's failing...she can't keep her mouth shut.  She wants to know where he hid his master gardener's certificate.  She wants to grind it into the ground with her mud encrusted boot, pour gasoline over it, and watch the flame of the dropping match torch it into cinders.  She wants to know why he wasn't struck by a huge bolt of lightning when his large pudgy fingers wrapped themselves around that worthless piece of paper on his and hers last evening of classes.

He doesn't see a problem...all the hoopla she's created...why can't she just chill out.  So overly melodramatic...too nit witty picky...she's a pain where the sun don't shine.  She resigned to living with a mistake last time, so why can't she live with another insignificant teeny little mistake this time?  How was he supposed to know that huge purple flowering vine he crushed at the base when he backed up from weeding would have recovered if he hadn't ripped it out of the ground to cover up his mistake?  How could she have missed it that soon?  Did it scream out to her telepathically?  He thought it a bit overkill to be asked how he felt about trashing $35 and three years of her hard work down the toilet in 10 seconds flat.

Now she says she needs a break from all the extra work he's causing her.  She says she needs things done her way, not his way...to rephrase it, she said...she needs things done the right way, not the wrong way.  He thinks she's loopy...he DOES do it her way.  He went to those entire master gardener classes with her, for her.  He even agreed to stop bugging her to use her own personal money instead of household money for upkeep of the gardens.  He doesn't understand her last tizzy fit with her patch of newly planted prairie garden above the pond.  He listened to her whine about the drought tolerant plants being drought stressed, so he fixed it for her.  What's the big deal!  Why is she at the top of the pond cussing and raking off the four inches of water saturated powder-fine wood mulch he painstakingly lumped on and around her plants?

He's now banned from the gardens without adult supervision.  She says she wants him to stay away from her plants so she will still have a garden come late summer.  He doesn't quite know how to take his current situation.  He must have misunderstood her last week when she complained she no longer wanted to be his mom.  He decides to throw in the towel...no more Mr. Good Guy.  He plants himself on the cushy couch in front of the big screen television in that air conditioned room with his tall glass of iced tea and tries to avoid eye contact and feeling like a dog every time she drags in from the gardens saturated in sweat, tracking dirt across the floor looking...well, quite frankly...looking like one of those plants in her prairie garden that started wilting two days ago.

  

Nightscape

The leopard frog quietly waits beneath four bags of hardwood mulch held high from the ground by two rows of cinder blocks.  The sun has set, and he emerges into the twilight glow softly hopping across the patio into the garden beyond.

Two chirps break the hushed approach of darkness as the little tree frog inches from under a valley in the vinyl siding towards the open edge bordering the deck's sliding door.  It chirps again, and emerges poking its head out from under the trim.  Gradually it seems to float across the wall, but only when you're not looking.

Dusk begins to pulsate with sparkles as lightning bugs hover, then move silently in and out of the plant shadows.  The last bird calls of the day are fading as a few sunflower chips are plucked from the feeder by late feathered visitors.

Silk threads appear across the landscape as the night spiders begin their journey to find their special place amid the leafy tree canopy and gardens below.  The buzz of wings passes by as an invisible beetle makes its way into the black void beyond.  The air is still.

The tinkling of wind chimes suspended from the second hook of the hanging bird feeders' shepherd pole announces the opossum has found the remaining seeds, and you know that morning light will break upon an empty feeder.

You look long until the outline of the world begins to slowly emerge from the darkness, your senses begin to sharpen, and the air grows with fragrances and night sounds.  You begin to realize that you are just one in all of infinity...one thread in the woven blanket of the entire cosmos.

You sigh, lean back on the swing, and look into the heavens sparkling with a dusting of stars from horizon to horizon.  You wait for that first shooting star of the night that will make your heart light, but know that most likely the only moving lights will be planes high overhead.  No Matter.

You're happy, and it doesn't need to be any better that that.