Of Gardens, Woods and Plastic Ponds

have spent the past three days up to my eyes in dirt, immersed in cultivated and authentic nature. On Sunday I spent a few hours gardening in my backyard. Having removed the weeds and sticks last weekend, I set about mulching the beds of rhododendron and such with shredded cedar bark. Monday, the Lower Merion Conservancy assigned me to the role of trail maintenance. This allowed me to simply take a clipper and handsaw and explore a few miles of looping trails in Rolling Hill Park. I felt very Walden-ly (though I haven’t read the book), wandering around for hours, getting lost and dirty. I enjoyed it. Today I spent the morning digging with shovel, ax and middle schoolers, to install a pond behind the Middle School. Mr. Ross and I solved the formerly intractible problem of digging deep enough to get the plastic basin of the pond underneath the feeding downspout pipe. The simple answer was to use a flexible extension and a gorilla glue bond to go up and then down into the pond. The crew managed to get a fence up later in the day. The “pond” will look like one soon, according to the plans.