European Gardening: Pond projects, 1 by Patbarr

Patbarr wrote:
My pond has masses of damsel flies this week, both the red bodied and the azure but I've not seen any dragon flies recently.

We used to have lots of toads in the garden, but I haven't seen any for years, and there is never any toad spawn in the pond. When I was small our resident toad lived in a large clump of variegated grass in a shady corner of the garden. I could always find him there in summer and he hibernated in the ashes in the base of the coldframe in winter.
We didn't even have a pond then so he would have had quite a trek across the road and up a steep banking to the nearest one.

I had a traumatic accident this morning while mowing the lawn, I accidentally mowed a frog and he was so badly injured - won't go into detail - that I had to finish him off. I will in future check the longer bits of grass round the edges near the little pond before getting the mower out.