After repeated toppings up, and constant draining away, it would appear that the water level in the pond now holds (for a while at least) at about nine inches at its centre. In the middle it looks quite pretty and habitable; clear water, bulrushes and a water lily or two.
But at the sides it all turns a bit dark; a foot of black puckered pond liner slopes down to a shallow bank of muddy water filled spongy olive moss and something that looks like green felt, the bright baize playing surface for a gathering of skittish, water skating insects.
The green felt is actually blanket weed, grown fat from all the nitrates and phosphates in the tank water we've been using to top the pond up. I fish most of it out and add a little rain water that's been collecting in a bucket, thinking "when would be the best time to empty it all out and fix the leaks?"
Whilst I ponder this, peering into the water looking for newts, my eyes adjust and I realise that what I thought was the back of a water lilly bud is actually the frog, from two posts ago, still with us. He's clearly been riding the rising levels, feeling out the falling ones, whilst the bulrushes above him bend in the wind and sway with the breeze.
No comments:
Post a Comment