Doldrums

The leaves are all down now, and the wind has conveniently pushed them into piles. All that’s left is to drag them over to the designated leaf disposal area, a low swampy spot I am trying to fill up. We had snow on the holiday weekend, so I couldn’t get the visiting nephews to rake to earn arcade money.

The cold spell meant that the Pond was frozen as well, and we were unable to do any Pond maintenance. At the very least, I want to get this year’s leaves out of the Pond and to make a dent in the silt deposits where the streams enter. We had a massive drenching in the fall with 9 straight days of torrential rain leaving a bothersome deposit of silt and sand in the shallows. The water hyacinths were buried or washed away, so I didn’t get to bring any in to save them for next spring.

I bought a pair of waders for Pond work. We’ve been wading in and lifting leaves from the bottom with a rake. We put them on a tarp and drag them away. It is a very inefficient process and hard on the back, but I don’t know how else to get the leaves out without killing the critters that live in and hibernate in the silt under the leaves. We have several species of frogs, salamanders, crayfish, a water snake, and some reclusive turtles as well as a plethora of unidentified aquatic arthropods and small snails.

Last fall, 2005, when we converted dismal to Pond, we had so much more energy. I estimate that we mined over 25 tons of stone from the mountain with only a wheelbarrow with a flat tire. This year, I feel tired all the time and just can’t get into the swing of home improvement. Some of it is a sense of futility. Creating the Pond was fun, but maintaining it is just plain work. The battle against leaves and silt will never be won, just fought to a stalemate.

A really discouraging thing has been the failure of our project to remedy a very swampy low area of the back yard. For 18 months, we filled it with spoil from various projects to a depth of some 18 inches. This summer, we bought a truckload of dirt and moved it wheelbarrow at a time to the project area (I at least inflated the tire this year) and added another 6 inches. We planted grass and watered it until it took hold. It seemed so promising, but now the same area is a swamp again despite all the backbreaking labor! Mrs Vache Folle is thinking French drains. I (to whom the digging of the drains would fall) am thinking that we should just embrace the seasonal swampiness of the spot and plant it with moisture loving foliage and traverse it with a boardwalk or some such thing.

Perhaps if I threw in some creative projects with the maintenance, I would regain some of my enthusiasm. Maybe there’s a Despair Squid in the Pond.