The Pond

An instant of great clarity overcame me yesterday; one of those glowing and effervescent moments when the sun just happened to be shining... a deep blue-grey cloud had shed its final shower and the tail-end droplets, full of rainbows, sparkled as the sun rolled free of its embrace. Warm silvery yellow waves grew paler in the heat, beneath a blue, silk sky. The fountains of dying raindrops sizzle and evaporate on riven stone.

I am quietly aware that the garden around me is full of life.

Ten years ago, this space was devoid of movement, no water ripple nor tree rustle, shook the brooding sward ...a neat and tidy void. The inheritance of lacklustre thinking is long forgotten; now recycled...almost to the last grain of sand.

Every 2nd-hand brick from the patio walls and every one of the 150 riven slabs were cleaned of mortar and used to build the ponds...careful engineering...basic hydrodynamics, bridge and dam ...I built where my predecessors had excavated.

Every sod of grass turned and converted to landscape. Every useable timber trimmed and refashioned...

Love's labour won. Two years of design from the bedroom window, a thousand sketches and images.

A renaissance.

I cast my eye full circle, my mother's careful catechism...east for morning light, south for full sun, north for moss and fern, west for sunset, learn by watching, not by reading and don't kill anything or you will break the cycle.

Think Oriental....how does bamboo behave, dare I risk its beauty?

Physical Labour to change the geography:

150 riven paving slabs cleaned and rebuilt

1000 bricks ditto

7 metric tonnes of earth relocated

5 metric tonnes of sand and 1 metric ton of cement imported, and then disappeared...

7 tonnes of lilac grey gravel were all hand-washed, sieved, then spread on black, breathable membrane.

One cubic metre of timber for furniture and 30 litres of jade and dark, dusky blue woodstain.

5 metric tonnes of water to fill the ponds and two ultra-violet recycling pumps to cleanse and provide movement; the legacy of this are the amphibians who found, colonised and now inhabit this oasis which lies on an ancient route to the nearby river.

Lateral thinking - distribution of wealth:

25 species of bird pay no community tax, neither do their babies:

Collar doves, blackbirds, chaffinches, green and adorable goldfinches. Sparrows, starlings, magpies and wagtail.

Robin and wren, song and mistle thrushes, goldcrests. A barn owl makes me jump some summer nights.

Tits abound - long tailed, coal, blue and great.

A dunnock.

Visiting mallards from the nearby river always swim in both ponds alternately, what is that all about?

Wood pigeons eat like it's their last meal and incredibly a female sparrowhawk, which has dined on a collar dove 6 feet in front of me - and I have the video to prove it.

Swifts nest in the eaves, huddled in tiny spaces, their life on the wing temporarily suspended to rear their chicks. The most incredible birds, I watch them for hours - R.A.F. Red Arrows eat your hearts out.

Swifts feed, drink, mate and sleep on the wing. Some birds never land in their lifetime. I have occasionally rescued the young birds, who misjudge things and bellyflop on the gravel. Their wings are too long to take off again - which is why they live in the eaves...and I have noticed when I pick them up that they are completely tame and totally weightless. They have no enemies, because nothing could hope to catch one, so they have no fear of me or anything else -they look at me, flicking tiny black lids (this protects their eyes from insects at 120 mph) and I am awed at their candour and have sat with tears in my eyes gazing at this little miracle. They are quite content to sit in my hand or on my shoulder until they are ready to fly, then they drop-dive and soar, screaming with excitement back to their element.

Amphibians...4 species of frog, a hundred pair of newts, toads....did I make enough dens for them?

Waterboatmen and ramshorn snails, dragonfly and pond skaters.

Tadpoles eat mosquito and other insect larvae, yet to my surprise, blackbirds eat tadpoles...

Hedgehogs have more language than a London taxi driver and more chat-up lines and mating dances than us. I have cried with laughter watching them. Often 2-3 males will snort and snuffle and grunt as they mince around a female, squatting with her bum pressed coyly and firmly to the ground. Only a plump and spiky Michael Jackson will win her over.

Ladybirds and lacewings, papillons and moths.

Ants and spiders, snails, woodlice and a billion beetles in patented, split log castles.

Bat-boxes, butterfly boxes, bird boxes. All hand-fashioned.

The echoes of a thousand birds ricochet in tiny fragments as insects buzz and hum.

Trellises, planters, recycle bin, water butt, herb rockery, table and chairs, all carefully fashioned.

A fountain.

A wild flower garden of michaelmas daisies, buttercups and nettles for the butterflies. Campions and tiny carnations. Sedum and 'mind your own business' fill the rocky hollows and soften all the edges.

Cloisters of ivy, vine, jasmine, clematis and honeysuckle hug the deep blue fence in lazy embryo arcs.

Forget-me-nots scramble at their feet. Lilies and reedmace, hostas, waterlilies and wild crocus. Gentians and phlox, wild grasses.

Heathers, cyclamen, ballerina aquilegias in white and deepest purple, greedy too for every pastel shade, verbenas, poppies, muscari, narcissus. The scarlet fern deep in shade is highlighted by its green cousins.

Hellebores, jacaranda and scarlet dogwood are bullied by cerise anemones.

Tumbling fuchsia dance around a lemon tree.

A silver birch, my twinkling dappled sunshade sends clouds of pollen when the wind blows and thousands of seeds - I could reforest England with them.

A Japanese maple I've slowly teased to drape like a willow over the water is surrounded by my perfect daughters; morning glories in every shade of everything.

Daturas, crocosmia and chocolate cosmos grace the shade of the vine. Lily of the valley nod quietly.

Herbs............

Tiny mosses, lichen and algae slowly form carpets around the ponds.

The reality does not escape me, this is only the beginning, my philosophy lies unbreached.

My mistress nature, the libertine in brazen floral petticoats which she tosses in delight.

I relinquish control, overpowered by her beauty.

But then comes the dragonfly...

A polythene haze now afforded scant protection from the sun. Now almost white in intensity, its icy stare cleft the water deep as a fathom, creating the perfect ambient temperature for the dragonfly to hatch.

The olive-hued larval husk quivered as the optimum point for metamorphosis began. So far, its life had been a ferocious struggle, from egg to wriggling pupae. Its species casually devoured by so many others in the subaqueous battleground of life.

In blissful ignorance of its own vulnerability, it had sallied restlessly through the lightning months of its infancy, accelerating from defenceless, chewy minnow snack to goggle-eyed, ball breaking, minnow devouring assassin in little more than 6 months. It's witless, instinctive odyssey had led it to climb on sturdy legs to a crow's nest perch beneath the slender, suedette digit of the reedmace.

The penultimate phase was here, the moment was at hand, when a new element would be embraced.

A dog's ear may have heard the tiniest crackle as the starch-dry skin split and slowly flared open in the ferocious heat of the afternoon. It could be likened to a gem miner reaching out and rubbing clean the matrix from an emerald.

A steely gunmetal green suit of armour, crowned by a titanium helmet glared defiantly at the world. As the blood pumped into the gossamer, stained glass wings, its fixed gaze remained steadily and starrily focused on the kaleidoscope sheet of glass before it.

The wings unfurled and straightened, pulsing and flexing as the network of veins sucked in the magic potion, bringing them to life.

An electric, new energy suddenly filled the creature as the drying process completed. A new weightless sensation as the trembling iridescent canopy drew in the updraft of warmth from the waters' surface and balanced its body in free air.

The maiden flight was more a glide onto the surface of her former element, skipping for a moment on the trampoline trap of surface tension, before soaring like a hawk into the glare of the sun.

Laplappapillon

Note. A hawk is the dragonfly's only predator capable of matching it aerobatically.