Cleaning Out The Pond

WooWoo! This is what you wear when you're mucking out the pond. The pajama pants are very important. What else would you wear with rubber boots and a bikini top? ( I know this would make a fine Facebook photo, what with the bare midriff and all, but I'm savin' all my love for the blog on this one. You can't see any of my stretch marks in this photo. Booyah.)
This was after I ran squealing away from the bees that were attacking me. There are 2 hives on the far side of the pond and I guess I got too close for their comfort. Definitely too close for mine, eh?
Got stung in the thigh and narrowly escaped a good stinging to the top of my head. Had you been there to witness it, you'd have seen me doing that crazy stop-cartoon run-stop thing, with arms waving, then hanging my head upside down as I slapped myself silly trying to get the bee out of my hair. Her buzzing increased in pitch as she made her way closer and closer to my scalp. Bzzzzzz, BZZZZZ!!!!!

Anyway...Cleaning Out The Pond. This is our second Summer season with the pond. This year it's produced a nasty overgrowth of string algae. Sting algae is no good. Except, I hope, for mulch. This is my horticultural experiment of the Summer:The algae comes out of the pond like a heavy sopping wool blanket. Made out of green hair. Pretty gross, I guess.
Unless you're a frog. Do you see the dirty look he's giving me?They were not happy about the algae removal. It's nice and warm in there. I told them it was for the good of the pond.Actually, it's not that gross. Slimy and stringy, though. What's gross is when you're scooping up a big armful of it to toss into the wheel barrow and your hand squeezes down on something moving. Blech! Especially when it's a giant bullfrog tadpole. That sucker is probably 6 inches long. That head/body part? It's the consistency of an egg yolk and the size of an apricot.Or perhaps a crayfish is tangled up in there:I hope I wasn't the cause of that missing pincher arm!I caught another huge crayfish, but I didn't get a photo, darn it. He was halfway to being a lobster. Every time I accidentally caught something I squealed and then immediately got embarrassed for squealing.
What a smile!

Snails are shy. Another disgruntled frog. And I even caught a couple fish! This one was alive and well, just didn't want to leave the warmth of the algae. I'd throw him out and he'd swim right back into it. A crappie, I believe?

The only reason this is a bad job for me is because I felt horribly about how many creatures I'd inadvertently killed.

I'd wheel that mess over to the tomatoes only to find someone tangled up inside and in desperate need of water, so I'd run 50 yards back over to the pond to throw them back in. Then I'd get further into the pile in the wheel barrow and find someone else. Run all the way back over to the pond.

So to all of my pond buddies that perished yesterday: May you Rest In Peace.

And may you richly fertilize the tomatoes.