Pond Summer Stories

“Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear?”

― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Early in the summer the greenish yellow pond mossy stuff begins to really grow. Soon hundreds of little snails appear, perhaps to eat the mossy stuff, I think. So I figure the time has come to try fish. So I find some goldfish about as long as my hand and let them go in the pond.

Oh my goodness, what have I done! I name them Tang-IRENE, Sat-SUE-ma, MINNY-ola, and ORANGEY.

They immediately vanish. Now I am a worried parent. I fuss and pace. There are no upside down floating fish, so I hope they are ok, but it is days before I catch a single fleeting glint of orange in the mossy mass.

One day there are raccoon tracks leading into and back out of the pond. A week later there are huge bird tracks on the sand, again, walking into and then back out of, the pond. But still no fish to be seen. (Cue scary music here)

Suddenly the bloom of pond fuzz dies back, withdrawing to only the area protected by rocks from the roving pond pearls. It peaked as a huge fluffy chartreuse bloom filling about half the pond, so bouyant that pond skaters had to stop skating and crawl across the many greenish islands of the stuff. Now it has precipitously dissolved in a week or so!

I wonder if this is related to the rain we just had, that must have washed over the new sand from the ocean we had just put at each end of the pond, thickening the nascent beaches. Perhaps the pond fuzz did not like the salty sand.

Still no fish. I entertain dark thoughts about the futility of messing with nature.