walden, but with deet

i’ve been spending time making my house my own.

a little bit ago i asked some friends and family for feedback. what do i do well as a friend, brother, uncle. what could i do better. life stuff. i was in a bit of a down period and trying to figure out what was next.

one of the replies, from a brilliant philosopher, was that i’m incredible at building spaces. spaces where people feel comfortable. spaces where people want to belong.

but i’m usually building them for other people. not for myself.

that one kinda hit me in the feels.

after 20 years of living with other people, and building spaces for them, it felt like time to make this place mine while i’m trying to figure out if i actually want to stay in west philly or not.

one thing that has bugged me for years is the backyard. it has been mostly unusable because of mosquitoes, and it had turned into this overgrown, neglected thing.

i tried years ago. mosquito repellant plants, black light bug traps. toph tried while he lived here. took out a dying tree to get more sun into the yard. he even put in a pond, which is something i’ve wanted since i was 10. anthony and i even got yelled at for digging holes in the backyard in havertown because we were trying to make one ourselves.

but nothing worked. toph’s pond fell apart after he moved out. honestly it wasn’t really working before that either. but don’t tell him i said that.

i’m sure the fish were eating mosquito larvae, but in a small west philly yard it doesn’t take much. every neighbor’s bucket of water, dripping faucet, old container, whatever, becomes a mosquito factory. there is only so much one pond can do.

still, i wanted the yard to look nice. not like a weed pile with water somewhere under it.

so a bunch of sundays ago i dug the sludge out of the old pond and spread it around the yard so it could dry out into bio-mulch. it was exactly as disgusting as that sounds. i bought new liners, a new filter, a waterfall pump, and basically rebuilt the pond.

after a few weeks of letting it run and develop a bio-filter (good pond bacteria), i bought six shubunkins and some pond plants. they all look different and seem to have their own little personalities. they are beautiful and weird and fun to watch.

i am in the process of naming them as i learn about them. there’s a speedy gold one that is the smallest but bravest and is the first to greet me, two mammoth blue and gold ones that swim together all the time, a unique black one that darts in and back out in a flash like toothless the dragon, one with an all white face that might be female because the others nuzzle her all the time, maybe trying to get her to release eggs, and the other all blue one that hides most of the time. names tbd.

for about four days they all disappeared completely. i thought maybe something had eaten them. i had put up a wildlife camera before adding them to their pond, but it caught nothing hunting. turns out they were just hiding really, really well.

now they come out every morning for breakfast.

https://blossom.primal.net/8a3b24c1b44a2e2d95a43e5ab74d8f6b2bbab5f1b616386f64e990ef5638e30a.mov

the nice thing is they eat bugs and larvae and plant roots and whatever else they find. they’re scavengers, so i don’t have to be home every day to feed them. they’ll be okay.

that’s part of why i haven’t gotten a dog, even though i would absolutely love one. i have too much travel planned right now, and it wouldn’t be fair to the dog. one of these days.

the pond has not been without issues. i got stung by bumblebees on the chest, and then the next week on my foot, which made running pretty miserable for a few days. they were mostly peaceful while i was working, honestly. we were kind of working side by side. i must have stepped wrong or annoyed one at the wrong time.

i found a small hole but patched it quickly. CHONK, my fatass groundhog friend, didn’t like me blocking his entrance to the yard with big rocks, so he threw a bunch of mulch into the pond.

now the pond is running clear. the fish are out. the waterfall sound soothes and heals. and it’s feeling like a place i like to have my morning coffee.

but, as you’d expect, it has not solved the mosquito problem.

yet maybe that’s what the pond is for – not to fix the mosquitoes, not to prove anything – just to sit there in the yard and remind me that this place can be mine too.

so i just bought a couple cans of deet and leave them by the door.

#create