Sunday 18 November 2007

The Pond

Today was Pond Day.

Every island should have a pond. Correction, according to my children it should have a waterfall and full river system, but resources, dimensions and gradients only permitted a pond. This, in case you weren't reading over the summer, concerns my ecological "island" - the fields adjoining our house which I am converting into a wildlife sanctuary for migrating birds and anything else that finds the end result convivial.

We have had a digger booked for sometime, a friendly local builder who is busy doing serious things during the week, but kindly offered to come round and make a hole for us on his day off. One might have wished for better weather than the grey, wet gloom we've had today, but no matter. We only needed to shift earth, not lay concrete.

Of course it wasn't that easy. Access was the first problem. We thought we'd solved this by negotiating access through the neighbouring fields, but when the new metropolitan owner of the farm saw the machine we intended to drive over his delicate thistles and dandelions, he had a change of heart. He is most definitely not in my good books now. Luckily an alternative (if not entirely legal or direct) route was possible through a woodland, and so a full-blown eruption of tears was avoided in my littlest.

Then the machine got bogged down.

For some naive reason, I've always imagined diggers couldn't get bogged down. I don't know why I thought they weren't susceptible to the same terrain difficulties other vehicles experience, but now I have learnt my lesson. It took a good hour to wrestle it free, using every rock and branch we could find to give it some traction. Lunch was postponed. The extra hot tank was switched on in readiness for all the extra baths our exertions made necessary. But eventually the digger dug and the pond came into being, minus the water.

My youngest has never been muddier. Or, possibly, happier.

It's about fifteen feet across and six feet deep. Quite a hole. The next stage is to line it with clay and then let the autumn weather do its stuff. I can't say it looks very attractive at the moment, although my daughter apparently sees it as the very best kind of adventure playground. Still, I can easily imagine it filled with reeds, a couple of coots and a heron making good use of its nesting/hunting potential. I might even find a punt for it - something I can lie back in and listen to the cricket without interruption.

A pleasant dream for a wet November afternoon.

And now, finally, for lunch.

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