Fishy tales

The overnight frost was a lot worse than the night before, frozen hose, frozen ponds, frozen water buckets, and therefore a lot of lugging of water buckets which had been filled in the kitchen.
The sun came out quite early, and by about 11 this morning the garden looked like this

 and ducks and drakes were busy around the big pond:







Not sure if I mentioned that a split between the two groups has been developing for a few days, more and more I see the 10 youngsters coming up to the house, their food and pond, without having Captain and his girls trailing along - although these latter four [without Hedda usually] do come up through the orchard now and again.  The 10 have rediscovered their little pond after ignoring it for so long - I only managed one photo from the house so far:

And now I can tell you that our fish catching from the pond of friends went well yesterday, we carried home 2 containers with fish in big plastic sacks, one containing 7 and the other 8 or 9 - we lost count.  All of them are a lot bigger than the two tiddlers we had left in our fish pond:

 

John released them gently into our fish pond and they all seemed to be doing alright straight away.

 

 

 While searching for some photos the other day I came across some showing those who died last year, pictures from 1st January 2011 and from early May when they had crossed the street, the cheeky lot.  I still miss them all badly.