Abundance and Lack

Forget-me-not is clustered all round the bonsai-ed rowan tree, so much that you can't see its pot. There is a lot of forget-me-not in the garden this year; clouds throughout the beds, in the grass, under the trees. It looks stringy and insubstantial, but brave. Vetch is a wildflower I'm particularly fond of, and that's exploded this season, its lustrous purple flowers held aloft on spiralling tendrils above the grass. 

On Thursday I cleared out the pond, discovering sadly that there were only four remaining fish: one of the adult females had gone. That explains why they have been hiding despite the warm weather, though it still leaves me bewildered as to how a heron or some other predator can get at the fish despite the two layers of mesh, one string and one aluminium, over the surface of the pond. The blighters are, I know, persistent, but they would have to be preternaturally lucky as well to be around when a fish strays into the tiny unprotected portion of the pool. The water was full of clinging algae, but very little other life indeed apart from two frogs and a couple of pondskaters: not a single snail to be seen. I wonder how it has got so barren.