Sentinel

Post 7

Saturday, March 23, 2013
8:47 am

The pond was meant for grander landscaping. At one time, when we were a complete family and we dreamed of additions, in-ground pools, and another dog, we imagined a better version of what I sit next to today. By better, we meant changed. A gazebo perhaps. Cattails and decorative (ie non-native) grasses. In that perspective, we would walk down to the pond and spend the soft August evening listening to tiny summer frogs and casting a line or two into the depths with a delicate plop. The ground is still hard from our latest March freeze and the dried grass crunched under my feet as I walked out the front door and down to the decrepit concrete bench. It's beautiful in its own way, as resignation can be to a woman who has outgrown the girlhood dreams for her family. I put my hand down on the bench before I sat down, even though I knew the lichen-speckled concrete would be frigid and unwelcoming. I still sit down because its cold reality is not terrible enough to change.

Supposedly spring fed, this pond has a few issues with algae. (I read later that this is often called "Pea Soup Algae" and that the lack of vegetation around the pond could be hurting the PH level in the water. The quantity of geese droppings is not helping either.) Right now, it looks better than it did in the summer when I would hook up the hose to our outside pump and force running water into the pond, trying to get oxygen to the fish. I've never really thought of our pond as an "ecosystem," a true scientific term that necessitates scientific evaluation. It's just been our pond, high when we've had a wet spring and low when it's a hot summer and there's not been much rain. I know that in the next few weeks, the Canadian geese will sit on the same knoll overlooking the water that they've nested on for over ten years, that the male will be the picture of fidelity as he watches over his brooding mate. On the first day of spring, my mother emailed a video of a solitary goose honking from the top of our roof. "Happy first day of spring!" my mother exclaimed over its loud calls.

Know Your Geese

The pond is where we watch all sorts of wildlife come and go, the smallest of insects darting over its smooth water at dusk, the fish that burp the water as they rise up for the bugs. Some years ago, my mother and I escorted a gigantic snapping turtle from our back door to the edge of the pond because he did not seem to understand that he would have to go around and not through the house in order to reach the water. Using a combinatin of a green recycling can and a horse manure cart, we carried him to the edge and let him slowly trudge into the water, hissing his thanks until the water covered his scaly tale. I renewed my vow not to swim in that water. And just last week, I watched two young bucks dance and chase two does near the water's edge. They would charge and feint, face each other and then turn and change partners. I thought it must be some sort of mating ritual, but they playfully nipped back and forth for a long while, never stopping to actually consummate the relationship, choosing instead to race across the nearby pasture, white-tipped tails in the air. It was a beautiful day. I think they just wanted to celebrate.

This has been my non-scientific study of pond life and grateful as I am for those writers who can put a name to Pea Soup Pond Algae (cyanobacteria) and Canadian Geese (branta canadensis), I think there's a place for those of us who can sit on a cold bench in March and see the murky green water of a pond and hear the call of a goose as a different kind of sentinel, just as true to the glory of the natural world as any loyal, dark-necked mate.