My Mother’s Day Gift

Life is indeed about taking lemons and making lemonade. The last thing I wanted to see was blue plastic in the middle of a meadow, but on the day we were going to remove it, it was filled with polliwogs–thousands of them. I knew that in time they would become little frogs. Over twenty years ago I brought 6 little green and yellow frogs from my garden in Sebastopol, let them loose near a natural pool and I’ve been serenaded by their ancestors all these years later. It just wasn’t in my nature to destroy all these little lives. My husband had a different opinion about it all, but I won out.

But when summer came, and all the frogs had moved on and out of the pool, I got concerned about mosquito larvae. I bought some comets at a local fish store, and watched as they grew several inches that first year. I tried a couple tiny koi and the same thing happened. I put in water hyacinths and other water plants, added some minnows and then more koi.

Now they are having babies and I must have over 100.

My pond has defied all the odds. It is as green as moss. I don’t clean it. I just put in bubblers, a little trickle of well water and feed the fish every other day in the summer. They eat about a Big Gulp’s worth of pond sticks each feeding.

Their idyllic life started to change when we had a visitor. A great big Heron, almost five feet tall, decided this was his own private hunting ground. I watched in horror as he ate at least a dozen fish, some of them almost a foot long. I tried to get my dogs to notice, but the bird is smarter than they are.

But not smarter than my husband. So, for Mother’s Day, I am armed and dangerous. And on a focused mission to protect the little eden I have created, by accident.

Happy Mother’s Day from my garden to yours.