Dozens of Goldfish

 

 

"Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators... The land is one organism."

― Aldo Leopold

I accidentally leave the hose running into the pond, and instead of a few minutes, it ran for a few hours. The result is a very full pond, like after a big rain. Wow! All of the goldfish come out to explore the newly underwater places. For the the first time since putting them in, I count all of the original goldfish. All have survived! None missing!

What an elegant little whorl of life the pond has given rise to! With the fish, the little world of the pond feels complete now. I decorate the pond some more with pretty rocks, driftwood, shells and crystals.

 

Pearly and Grey, the pond pearls, are separated for the moment. Pearly is getting deflated and no longer floats freely, so I bring her up to a resting place on the sandy beach.

 

As the person of the pond I feel a little taste of the joy and responsibility of creation. I am about to feel the down side, too. The flood has revealed the finger long babies from the first spawn, dozens of them, at least fifty. Only about one out of four has its bright orange, white and black coloration coming in, the rest are still in fish camo. But this count doesn't even include the more numerous tiny fry, the ones from the second spawn, which are now about an inch long.

 

Whew! Even I know that many fish can't fit in the tiny pond. So I wish for the heron and the ducks to come visit. Sure enough the heron, and a wood duck do come. I see a dark shadow out of the corner of my eye and look up to behold the huge wingspan of the great blue heron as it descends upon the pond.

 

I happen to be looking as it catches one of the big, hand sized, bright orange, original goldfish, and gulps it down in a second. Hey! You were supposed to eat the little ones! I do not know if the heron got Orangey, or Minny-olla, or tang-Irene, or sat-Sue-ma. It stays for an hour, and I think it does get a few little ones too.

"Remove the predators and the whole ecosystem begins to crash like a deck of cards" - Brian Skerry

 

 

 

The Squiggles Begin to Hatch!

"The universe is squiggly!" -Omni

It is a long term project. I tie together all kinds of fiber yarns, all the same general color category, into one long continuous string. The colored strands wind together into a yarn ball. This ball is the SEED.

The round knitting loom extrudes the thneed as it patterns into the next form, the EGG. This is the second stage in my project.

The eggs sit around in a basket for a while, then, they hatch! Into the third stage: the SQUIGGLE!

This is very exciting. Right now, the squiggles are loose in the house....

I create the squiggle stage by wrapping copper wire with pillow stuffing. (For stuffing, I grab a few pillows from around the house and dissect them.) I sew covers for each pillow wrapped copper wire, then thread them through the knitted tubes, pulling the end strings tightly shut.

It is a long term project, so stay tuned to see what happens next.

The squiggly ness of the universe is a very important thing to realize. Things are often squiggly when we expect or want them to be straight, linear, and square. But universe does not think in terms of straight or linear, even though we find the concept useful in many ways. So when we interface with real stuff, it's good to remember it is really, actually, all quite squiggly.

 

The Birds and the Bees and also the Fish

"The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you freed." -Buddha

Today I was completely astonished to peer into the pond and see a happy goldfish just hanging still in the water, in the sun. But this goldfish was as long as my finger only, not as long as my hand, like the several fish I had just released in the pond. Small fry!

I have grand-fish! Who knew? Not me, that goldfish were so quick to reproduce? Drop three or four into a nice warm pond, a heat spell in this case, they can spawn right away, a few days later, maybe only two days, and you have hundreds of small fry.

Give those babies a big fat bloom of algal shelter, it serves as a hiding place, and then even, yes, dinner for the small fry too! But they do this after first eating all the unfertilized eggs.

Who knew? Not me, I did not know that once the eggs hatch, the other goldfish not only do not care for the babies, they will eat them if they can find them! So it's good to have a place to hide, because a goldfish is on its own from day one.

Later I see the little school swimming around, about a dozen little mostly silver, with a few orange fishies!

The Mysterious Gray Thing

Today we have blue dragonflies on the pond rocks, and white butterflies flitting in the breeze around the pond.

The fish in the pond are quite active at random times and often in the twilight hours. I watch them for a long time as they swim, explore, and patrol.

Sometimes a small silvery grey fishy looking thing, maybe a finger long, kind of rises up out of the pond scum at the bottom and sort of swims along with the little group of goldfish for a few feet, then dives back down into the brown muck.

What is it??! Sure looks like a fish, but I haven't gotten a real good look. Sometimes I think I see several of these mysterious swimmy thingies.

I reflect on reflections. Shiny flashes of mystery creatures, moving in living waters, on reflection, prompt me to reflect upon the the shiny mirror that the pond is to me, connected to the all, reflecting the infinite sky of light.

You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather. --Pema Chodron

The Reef

I feel bad for the fish. I did not mean to turn them into raccoon food! Once, before there were fish, I saw a great blue heron stand quite still for a long while next to the pond, just looking, and then flying away. I decide that if any of my guys are still alive, they need shelter.

So I throw a bunch of stuff in a pile in the middle of the pond: a metal rack, flower pots, some planting trays, and even some dysfunctional watering nozzles that we had forgotten to take off their hoses before the the first big freeze in years past. Rocks to hold it all down. A tiny island rises out of the water.

The next day the reward is sweet. The pond scum I stirred up has settled, the water is clear, and three frisky fish are chasing and cavorting around the pond! I watch them darting in and out of the their newfound fort.

Later I remodel the reef, adding repurposed four inch diameter black plastic drainage tubes. Each one is a few feet long, so now my fish have longer hiding places, out of the reach of heron beaks and raccoon arms.

"Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream. Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success. Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity for success. Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture your dream."

― Lao Tsu

Summer Tree Dance Meditation

"And see the peaceful trees

extend their myriad leaves in leisured dance—

they bear the weight of sky and cloud

upon the fountain of their veins." - Kathleen Raine

(From the Be a Tree Meditation Book):

All summer long you have played and danced in the breeze, soaking in the sun's gift of light power. Effortlessly, your gifts have grown, and now the colors of ripening begin to appear like blush on the cheeks of children.

Soon the fruits of your winter imaginings, your spring flowery starts, and your summer enactments will fall into your hands as you dance the final dances of summer.

A kind of seriousness creeps in with the cool mornings, calling gently that it is time to prepare for the harvest. Indeed, what was effortless for all the mellow summer days now begins to feel a bit like work, even as in the later months of a pregnancy, a woman's steps begin to weigh heavily upon the path to the birthing.

The dance of the summer has roots, unlike the sky flying pollen dance of spring. All of your faculties are fully in play now, expressing all of the grace and nuance of your creative power.

Feel now, in this summer tree dance, roots, leaves, and fruits nearing completion. Feel the swirling magic of summer wind and sun, rain and roots in earth, all combining in the nearly finished creation you focalize now in your matrix-being.

Feel, visualize, and know yourself standing tall and strong, at the peak and height of your powers, the top of your game.

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.

Returning...

Pond Summer Notes

"Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like."

― Lao Tsu

I just love the pond. My window looks out upon the pond. A glance at the pond tells you many things about the world outside. It is a live, continuous, read-out of light and wind, rain and sky. Because everything is connected.

Just now, Pearly and Gray, the pond pearls, rush across the surface of the water, pushed by a sudden urgent wind. They do not leave a wake when they do this. The wind and water and their exquisite spherical forms all move as one in these transits.

Yet when Pearly and Gray bump against the rocks and bounce back toward the center of the pond, a series of circles emanate from the site of the collision.

I wonder if I can learn to move without a wake, in perfect harmony with the everything I am connected with.