A NICE QUIET WEEKEND

Every once in a while, its nice to have a quiet relaxing weekend doing absolutely nothing. A chance to recharge the battery. Especially after a really crappy week at work. (Lately, EVERY week is a crappy week at work!!!). So thats exactly what I had this weekend, a nice quiet relaxing two days. I watched a bit of footy (well done Blackpool and Inter Milan) and cricket (Twenty20 is a brilliant invention), did a bit of reading (mainly Jamaican field guides), and did a bit of catching up in the garden. After doing the boring stuff, you know - mowing the lawns + weeding etc, I got the chance to play in MY bit of the garden. Allow me to explain..............

Last year, Maria very kindly allowed me to have a small section of her precious garden to do exactly what I wanted. Now I have to point out, she ADORES her garden, so for her to do this was a huge thing. So obviously my thoughts immediately raced towards a wildlife garden. But seeing as it was getting toward winter, it would be pretty pointless doing any planting. But what I COULD do was build a pond. So I did! Over a long weekend last October, me and my dad made a pond from scratch. I did all the digging, got it to the shape I wanted, gave it a couple of different sized shelves (basically a deep end, middle bit and a shallow end) then the two of us filled it with sand, carpet and the lining. Filling it with water was the last and definately the easy part! And then I waited. A looooong time! As we all know winter was long and hard. I waited till the back end of march before I started to put plants in the pond. A couple of weeks went by with nothing happening then about two weeks ago the pond seemed to explode into life! It was absolutely brilliant. First the plants started to grow. Then the insects appeared. A couple of water boatmen were first, then I noticed a water spider, and then the snails. Just a few at first, but now theres loads of them! And the thing I want to know is, where on earth did the water snails come from? Seriously, how did they get into my pond? Surely they couldnt have crawled from a nearby pond. If anyone knows the answer feel free to let me know! Anyway, about two weeks ago I came home from work, had a little check of the pond and was greeted by the wonderful sight of frog spawn. And quite a lot as well! I was so excited. I knew there was a decent chance of it happening cos I'd often seen a frog or two on the rocks. But I honestly didnt think it would happen so soon. So every day since then I have been going to the pond to see how they were doing. And every day the spawn has been getting smaller and smaller. And I'm pretty sure the reason is they have been set upon by the snails. The snails have always been in the vicinity of the spawn, so I'm sure they've been filling their boots. Or shells! Again, if anyone knows this to be true please let me know. There's now only a couple of clumps of spawn left, and I'm not very hopeful of them lasting long enough to hatch. But as we all know, thats nature!

The evil Water Snail