Nature is Never Spent

I'm back at the farm. I knew the drought in this part of the state was becoming severe, but driving here through the hills almost made me gasp with how obviously bad things have become. I'll probably write more on the general situation later, but this morning I walked down to the pond and saw something I've never witnessed before: our spring-fed pond is almost completely dried up. The spring bubbles out of the ground nearby and flows into the pond, oxygenating and cycling the water before it flows out into a little creek at the other side. Or it has done with basically no human interference for the 29 years we've lived on this place, but now the spring has disappeared. The sight of the cracked mud and stranded lilies and the pathetic, murky pool that remain were a bit of a shock, even though I was prepared.

It's nothing like this lake in Texas or this one in Florida, but the condition of our little pond is a very personal illustration for me of how this disaster affects natural systems.

( Images of a dry pond )

Even though it was an unpleasant surprise to see how things have changed so quickly, it was interesting how some things are still hanging on and taking advantage as well as they can. Bless the frogs and dragonflies and raccoons and birds and waterbugs and anything that can live in green mud.

Inspired by the experience of finding a toad under a rock, and by this how-to article, my niece and I made a toad house. Here's what I did:

1. Start a day or two before you want to "plant" the house.
2. Find a medium-sized plain terra cotta pot and saucer. Use a hammer to knock a large chip out of the rim. Then use glue to glue most of the pieces of the pot back together, after you realize there is no way to be delicate with a hammer on terra cotta. Also, glue the bottom of the saucer to the bottom of the pot, so that when you turn the pot upside down, the saucer is right-side up.
3. After the glue has dried, tell your 5-year-old what you're up to. If you make it sound exciting, she'll be excited. She may want to go right out and hunt for toads. You can use this to motivate the next step.
4. Go outside and hunt for pretty little things with which to decorate the toad house. At the farm, we have an abundance of broken pottery and glass from the mid 20th century always working to the surface, so we were able to find lots of this. Little stones and marbles would work just as well though.



5. Glue the decorative items to the pot mosaic-style or in some sort of pattern. Work quickly. You are in a race against time before your 5-year-old loses focus and moves on to the next interesting thing. I used a hot glue gun since it was the fastest method.
6. When you're finished decorating, go outside and find a shady, protected spot. Ideally, it should have some plant cover and moisture and bugs to eat.
7. Hollow out the soil a little where you're going to plant the pot. If your "doorway" chipped into the rim is small, dig out a "pathway" into the hollow as well.
8. Put the pot down over the hollow and pack soil around it so it's steady.
9. Put soil into the saucer on top and place moss in the soil. Water.
10. Go away and wait for Mr. Toad to move in!