First tadpoles seen today swimming about. About half the frogspawn looks as though it survived the big freeze.

A pair of frogs spotted in F1 in the front garden. It was difficult to see how they could get to the pond by themselves in that configuration, so I moved them to the pond’s edge. They soon swam off into slightly deeper water.

First frog spawn seen this year

Pair of adult frogs seen for the first time this year. Sunny, but still quite cool.

Large water soldier with two small offsets, water plantain and fibre optic plant already looking at home the day after adding to the pond

This has never been very serious. It comes and goes with the seasons and weather. It’s easy to remove by twirling round a stick, but this tends to trap and pull out plants and animals, so I’ve stopped doing it this way. It can be pulled away from plants by hand and dumped in the shallows, where it dries out in dry periods and put on the compost heap (where it doesn’t rot down much, oddly). I haven’t had to add tap water to the pond since it was first filled, and the blanket weed is definitely in decline.

… or is it? Could this be the Bog arum that I thought had vanished? Single leaves like these have popped up in several places.

This sedge hop plant is doing very well. Its roots had more or less filled its planting bag, so I’ve removed this. I’ve also moved it away from the pendulous sedge which it resembles quite closely.

This plant has appeared in the pond in several places. The leaves are 2″ to 3″ long, and the stalks appear to rise from the very bottom of the pond, which is about 3′ deep.