The End

Eight years of work is plenty of time to spend on any one nature project so these pictures are of my final visit to the pond and this will be my last post. It was a great adventure for several of those years, but now it just seems like more yard work and I'm not interested in labor for its own sake. I'm going to leave the blog because it's like a good book that others might be interested in (five years of pictures and personal observations), and I hope the pond is stable enough to maintain itself for many more years because the local wildlife has become so dependent on the water and plant life.

Maintenance is a never ending activity

And it's little things - my sister and Cashmere have done the hard and heavy stuff. Cleaning out the little canal (6 inches wide, 10 feet long, and 1 inch deep at the most) that waters the plants on the east side of the shop took me all day and I'm not even counting the nap. I sat there for a while today to reconnect a little more and experienced an unexpected sense of the cosmic. Usually (or maybe only lately) the sense evoked has been sedentary, or almost agricultural - like a chore rather than a retreat. I'm just glad that I can still move between the two states.

Goodbye to Mr. Bill

From his local family and friends to his family and friends who couldn't be here.
It was an incredibly beautiful day and the pond is almost perfect.
The closing of a good story.

Waterfall repair completed

The kids enjoy being able to cool off in the spillway.

Underneath the tall grass and debris lurks an ecosystem

Every day I try to do something to the pond, and no matter how insignificant any single task seems at the time, they are adding up. It looks better every day and should be spectacular by mid-fall.