The Great Pond Clean-Up

Despite having lived at the house for two weeks, no one is ever used to opening the door to the bathroom, to be greeted by a toad or frog perched on the toilet seat or bathtub, just staring at you. Or stepping out of the door to find a toad high on the wall of the house.

Then there was the problem of existing mosquitoes, despite having emptied a can of insect spray and following up with a few strategically placed mosquito coils. Even the presence of geckos and spiders did not seem to eleminate them, and the fact that there were geckos and spiders proved that blood suckers are abundant around our place.

While the S.O. was not that sure that the pond was the main cause of these other adopted residents of the house, I was certain that it was so. The water had turned dark, and falling leaves from the trees and plants had not been removed from the pond for more than two weeks.

Thus I woke last Friday morning with one thought on my mind: remove all the fallen leaves from the pond first, then we shall take things from there.

There were no proper tools for the operation, except a changkul that I spotted in a corner of the garden. With it, I slowly scooped out the leaves, as mosquitoes tried to assail me. Luckily I was prepared: I had inserted burning sticks of incense near my feet to keep the blood suckers at bay.

As more leaves were removed from the pond, a very interesting sight appeared: the pond was swimming with tadpoles. Not just a small amount, but probably a few hundred! I had never seen that many tadpoles in one pond before, and neither had the S.O.

The sight of so many potential members of a toad/frog choir prompted him in to action too. He changed out of his 'desk work' outfit in to a 'doing menial work' outfit, picked up a plastic pail, and started to scoop out water from the pond. As there was no where to throw the water, it was all dumped on to the ground.

Along with the water came the tadpoles, more leaves, and some small fishes. As the S.O. was helping to remove the leaves with his scooping, he ordered me to rescue any fishes that were spotted.

This resulted in me trying to scoop up the fishes and transport them to a pail filled with water. As is natural for fish who are struggling to try and survive out of water, they were flicking about and this caused me to scream out a few times. In the end, about 18 fishes were rescued from the pond, and given to the kids next door to play with.

After about 40 minutes of scooping out water, the pond was emptied, and the tadpoles lay dying on the ground in a few patches. The S.O. then washed the pond clean, sprayed the surface with insect spray and placed another mosquito coil on its now dry base.

So now we have a dry, empty pond. The tadpoles are all gone, thus eliminating the toad/frog orchestra of the upcoming rainy season. There are decidely less mosquitoes as well, since the breeding ground is gone.

What do we plan to do with the pond now? No more stagnant water in there, for sure. We are going to fill it up with soil, and make it a part of the garden by putting plants in there.

Thus ended the great pond clean-up and the start of the changes to our garden.