The peepers are going.  It is interesting to observe that the pond across the road, located in a field in full sun, starts up several days ahead of Julie’s pond, located in the woods.  The dance of temperature and light continues.

It is nice to hear the frogs though.  Now if we could just get the algae back under control in the pond.  Actually, it doesn’t appear to be growing denser at the moment, despite the temperatures, which suggests that the bio-balls may be able to bring it back under control.  Basically, they are basketball sized balls containing the bacteria* which naturally keeps algae in check, which is then spread on a time-release over several weeks.  We had to use them last year as well, and they did work.  Hopefully, in a few years the pond will restabilize…unless of course the vineyard’s** run-off does get into it.  We don’t think it does, but water does such odd things.  However, the nutrient load is probably still coming from the pond itself, since it is less than 18 months from when we rebuilt the dam and reflooded  a large area, which is not a terribly long time.  There is no option but to be patient with it though, even if it wasn’t located in a public water-supply watershed, I have no intention of dumping an algae-cide into it.  Somehow, even putting a targeted poison into a water-source strikes me as bad karma.

*That the bacteria doesn’t easily colonize a pond, despite adequate food, is a good illustration of how delicate bacteria can be, apocalyptic sci-fi not withstanding.

**Vineyards are about as un-green as you can get in commercial agriculture, right up there with any other intensive, finicky crop.  They pretty much have to be too if the farmer wants a reliable annual crop and a wine with the essentially the same profile every year.