The Lotus Pond

Last summer David brought home a black plastic tub and some tiny lotus plants.  He filled the tub with mud, brought water from the farm pond to introduce a few water creatures, nestled the plants into their new home and we waited.  Within a couple of months we had breathtaking, spectacular flowers.

D would visit the little pond daily to see what was up, who was hatching, growing, zipping in and around the floating leaves.  All kinds of frogs moved onto the scene.  The lotus pond became a source of entertainment and natural wonder.

During the first warm nights this past spring, when we opened the windows to let in the night air, along with the breeze came a deafening call of dozens of tree frogs just outside the bedroom window where the little pond sat.  David constructed a plywood sled that he hoisted the pond onto and then used to drag the heavy pool across the yard and settle the tub further away from the bedroom window.  He brought soil to pile around the edges and planted iris and ginger lilies to soften the black plastic rim.  Just this past week the lotus began to bloom again. 

They are ethereal.

Along with the frogs and whirly gig beetles, tadpoles and skimmers came dragonflies.  Nymphs that spent the winter in the mud began to crawl up out of the muck onto the stalks. Their backs split open and out hatched the winged creatures, filling up like butterflies coming out of a chrysalis, then taking wing around the yard, snatching up mosquitoes and other small flying insects.

Dry nymph shell above, dragon ready to fly below

Buddhists consider the lotus to be representative of the journey to enlightenment, from the murky mud rises a beautiful flower, its opening an awakening or rebirth.  I'm glad to see the fat purple buds and pink flowers gracing the yard again and its timely that they came at the summer solstice, I certainly have felt my own energy rising after the passage of the first day of summer.  I've not reached enlightenment, I'm far from that, but I do feel a release from things that were weighing me down, a renewal of my spirit moving me forward to new things. 

I'm trying to embrace summer as best I can.  

Swimming outside, riding my bike, long evenings drinking gin and tonics, playing croquet and watching the fireflies rise up from the lawn, suppers of tomatoes, corn, squash and cucumbers, and I picked our first ripe blueberry today.

Yep, summer has arrived.