The "pond"

We live with a swamp in the back of our house. It has green gunk covering the top of it and the trees are overgrown with wild raspberry vines that are growing into “the pond”. The pond has little hoses that run across the patio into a little shed that blow water in it. I cannot see how anything can live in it with all the green stuff on it. There is a plastic bucket in it and a few plastic flower pots. There are buckets on the pavers next to the pond filled with water and green stuff too. The pavers are no longer flat since roots from the bushes surrounding the pond have made them unstable. It is surrounded by a wrought iron gate that the owners suggested we padlock so that the children don’t slip on the pavers and fall into the pond. I cannot even look at it. My dream of a nice garden slips away as I walk across the moss covered patio toward the pond. I don’t have the slightest idea of what to do with this pond. It looks as if it had been a nice place at one point in time. Now it looks like it has been neglected for about 5 years.

I wandered to the back shed and found a bunch of rusty gardening tools including a pair of hedge choppers. I tried them out on a dead limb of a tree and found that they were still quite sharp. Hearten by this I headed over to the pond area and started chopping back the bushes so that the pavers could be seen. I created a huge pile of debris as I chopped things back. My hands and legs were covered with scratches from the wild raspberry vines. The vines were over an inch in diameter in some spots and my hands and arms were getting tired. The mosquitoes near the pond were feasting on me making my job that much more uncomfortable. I finally gave in after two hours of work. As I stepped back, I could see the pavers beneath all the leaves, but the bushes at the end still leaned over and touched the pond. I had managed to remove a lot of trash out of the pond and now I had to figure out what to do with all the clippings.