This is to put all you keen gardeners in your place.

It should be reassuring to see what happens if you do absolutely nothing. We dug the pond because we were fed up with having to evacuate the tadpoles every year as the puddles dry up and their wriggling density becomes alarming.

Here it is 4 months later — despite the drought!

There are fishes too, very tiny super-sonic ones. This is promising:

A frog wondering where her favourite puddle has gone. There are water boatmen and the southern hawker was patrolling all summer, though we haven’t seen the female laying eggs we live in hope that soon the mud will be teeming with insect larvae.

It’s been a miraculous summer all round.