The pond

The new house has a little pond - not sure how many gallos, but it is about 5 feet long and a couple feet deep. When we moved in there was one lone fish - he had weathered at least one winter in the pond alone. We called him Encino like the character from the movie.

Jacob likes the new neighborhood. He has a couple of boys his age, but more importantly, there are woods and he has a place to hang out and get muddy. There is a boy in the neighborhood who is older, but had meningitis in first grade, so he and Jake have that same non-linear thinking and they get along - fishing and catching frogs being their favorite pastimes.

I came home after work one evening not long after we moved in and found the two of them in the back yard. They had caught the fish and the frogs in the pond and put them in buckets. The water lilies were on the sidewalk and they were scrubbing furiously at the sides of the plastic liner for the pond. They had cleaned it out trying to be helpful. Unfortunately, they did not understand that frogs and tadpoles and fish need clean water - but not tap water. Several of the tadpoles bit the dust over night and I had to fish them out.