If you’ve followed this blog for any amount of time you know that the pond outside my window seems always to offer itself as a metaphor for life. For instance:
- The Boundaries of the Pond You Swim In , Jan 2015
- What if Your Place Loves You? , Jan 2013 Guest Post with Tracie Nichols
- Photo of egg sacs in the pond, 2013
- The Pond Outside My Window, Guest Post 2012 with Sacred Circle blog
- 10 Ways to Know You’re Awake, Jan 2011
- this is an especially plentiful summer of tadpoles – the video is of them coming to the surface of my pond to breathe.
This morning I was cleaning the pond. Normally I try to do this in August – after the tadpoles have become frogs and can move out of the way, after all the egg sacs have been born, after the baby goldfish are big enough to see and not scoop up.
When I clean the pond this time of year, I am edging up against a time when the fish are slower because the water is turning cooler, and there may be frogs starting to bury themselves in the mud. I don’t like to disturb the ecology of the pond because it takes care of itself. But if I don’t clean out the leaves, the balance will be messed up with too many decaying leaves making a swamp instead of a pond. We had Juaquin’s wind and rain to further fill it up last week, so I started on it today.
When I start cleaning, it mucks up everything and eventually gets to the point where I can’t see anything below the surface. I can feel around with the crab net (which is what I use) but I got a frog anyways, and I have to make sure I put the muck where I can see if anything is flopping around that should still be in the water.
I got to thinking how like rummaging around in the subconscious this is. How I often have no idea what I’m dreading up when I’m working on myself
until I see it in the daylight. Once again, my pond provides me a metaphor of working on myself, how things always get muddy and cloudy just before getting really clear. How everything looked pretty clear except for the mud at the bottom before I stir things up. How things will naturally clear again, and have no mud at the bottom. How over the period of just a year, the mud starts accumulating again.
I am so lucky that this place is right outside my office window. I use pictures of it for regular “inspiration” pieces (Pond. Peace.) on my facebook (where I got the pictures posted here).
Isn’t it wonderful how nature provides an encouragement (and lesson) for us simply by being what it is?
What is constantly an inspiration in your life? I’d love to hear!
1 Comment
I remember the tadpole video! I could have sat there and watched for ages! Relaxing.
You’ve given me a question to think about. I haven’t ever thought about it and had no immediate answer. Hummm….
Love yours, though. 🙂