An old silent pond... A frog jumps into the pond, splash! Silence again

An old silent pond.. by Matsuo Basho

I've been visiting the pond at the nearby park, the one set aside to commemorate a”skirmish in the French and Indian war.” This is a nice way to say”attempted atrocity in the ongoing genocide against the indigenous people of the Midwest in the years before the American revolution. Undoubtedly, ”skirmish et cetera” just sounds better.

The pond is posted “No fishing”. It's completely surrounded by new growth scrub forest. Buckthorn, multiflora rose, dogwood bushes, Tree of Heaven and Chinese honeysuckle . It's quite a tangle. Seems like the kind of place something would lurk. So does the pond. There's algae and rushes and it just doesn't look like somewhere I'd like swim or even wade.

Like the haiku says, it's an old pond. I'm sure there are frogs. It's also home to at least one blue heron. I'm here frequently with the dogs and we always check out the pond just before we leave. It's right off the parking area,shielded away by the undergrowth. Several times, we’ve run across Blue Herons and Egrets. A couple of days after I got the new phone with the badass camera, I decided I needed to take a picture of one of these giant birds.

The first two nights I scared off the birds. Me and a dog with tromping along the shore. We heard the birds take off and saw them for a brief second before they went up and over the trees. The next two nights I didn't see anything. Today was my lucky day!

Bad photos. I’m a good 50 yards away here. I forgot my tripod and I was probably off with my camera settings. I'll be better next time! At least I took the pictures.

Some mule shots from the other day -

Flowers. Always with the flowers.

That's all for tonight! Thanks for dropping by -