When I cleaned out my settlement pond last fall I had about 100 green frog tadpoles that I vacuumed up and threw back. I don't know if it was the warm winter or what happened, but my pond is "green frog heavy" the season. They have moved into every available container in my yard. I have Japanese maple seedlings sitting in buckets of water and several frogs in each of them. Can you count the frogs in this pic? I didn't buy any new plants or duckweed this year. It just appeared.

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I divided my water lilies and had them sitting in a bucket till I could take them to the nursery and this little critter decided to make it home. I didn't have the heart to take all the lilies. I left one for it to hide under.

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I didn't plant any watercress either. This is from last summer. Same with the pennywort that overwintered in the pond.

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This is the current view from my swing. I can hardly see the pond for the watercress.

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This was my view last summer, before the watercress moved in.

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Side pics of the waterfall

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In this pic of my top pond you can see that the water celery has taken over half the area. Of course when I tried to thin it out guess what I found? Frogs.

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Can you find the skippy filter?

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This is the first season in my 12 years of ponding that I decided not to use my UV light and my pond is crystal clear. I'm blaming it on the watercress. I did have green water in the spring, but once the watercress took off the pond cleared up in a few days.

Pics of my fish. Many of them are fry born two years ago in the pond:

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The black and white fish in the lower right of this pic is the biggest fish in my pond. I call it shamu because it looks like a little whale.

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My favorite fish:

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Jenny