Our Pond

Wonderful clouds today so I put on the wide angle, dug out the graduated neutral density filter and headed for the pond. I've been wanting to snap it for a while, but it needs a sky - murky grey won't do and we've had nothing but rain for a week (except the day it snowed.)

This really is our pond - at least half of it is. That is to say, it belongs to the family. My husband's family that is. So not my pond at all :( Anyway. The pond is usually completely overgrown and inaccessible - walking down to the water's edge is impossible. In the summer it will be covered with waterlilies, but also protected from visitors by a thick layer of mosquitos, a broad moat of swampiness, and a palisade of tall rushes and armed with ticks. I've never got so many ticks on me as the time I tried to make it down to the pond in the summer. But I digress.

We are trying to cut a nature path from our house down to our little pond, and from there out to the big pond (this one). We want to be able to enjoy our woods, and for them not to be an inpenetrable thicket that can only be accessed for about a month after the snow has melted in the spring and for about a month before the snow falls in early winter. So we've been out with the giant pruning shears and the chain saw, cutting down saplings, chopping up fallen logs (of which there are many) and making a path along which you can actually walk. We've still got a lot of work to do, but we've made a decent start. And it's fun too - much better than raking the lawn!

Another view