It has been seven months since we began the process of healing the rawness around the newly excavated pond. It was early September, the optimum time to throw down the meadow seed, and the ground greened quickly to stabilise the slopes over the winter. 

A pond at the bottom of a slope is not an easy thing to build and, by the time we had completed the work at the end of August, using the dry summer months for the dig, the weather was cooling and it was too late in the season to plant. So the pond lay waiting. An empty disk of sometimes silvery, sometimes inky-green water, reflecting the seasons as they came and went. In March we were surprised to see both frog and toad spawn, but despite our delight we were unsettled to see it without a haven as it drifted in March winds without an anchor or the shelter provided by planting. Life had begun against the odds.