At the end of August 2021, I installed a different type of garden: a water garden. I dug a hole in my backyard. It was six feet long, four and a half feet wide, and two feet deep at the deepest point.
I put in a pond liner and filled it with water.
I trimmed off the excess siding, buried the edges and tamped them.
Then I covered the edges with stones and logs and put in some aquatic plants. I put a small water lily (nymphea ‘Sioux’), a swamp milkweed (Ingrown Milkweed), a marsh marigold (caltha palustris), a wapato (Sagittarius latifolia), two gray reeds (an open reed), two molted reeds (Carex obnupta), and a handful of western yarrow (Myriophyllum hippuroides), an underwater oxygenator.
This is what the area looked like several years ago when we first moved.
And that’s what it looked like last year. This has become my favorite part of the garden.
I didn’t put any fish in my pond because I was hoping it would turn into a dragonfly pond and the fish would eat the baby dragonflies.
I was not disappointed. In July of the following year, I saw two meadow cardinal dragonflies mating by the pond. I don’t know if you’ve ever caught dragonflies in the act, but when they mate, they do so in this strange position. It’s called a mating wheel.
The male is bright red and the female is more of a rusty orange color. You will notice that the male grabs the female by the head. He has pincers on the tip of his abdomen, which he uses to grab his friend.
When his mate is ready to lay her eggs, the male does not let her go because he does not want other males to mate with her. He drags her by the head, dipping the tip of her tail into the water again and again, so she can lay her eggs, her eggs.
Later that day, I saw the couple again at the pond, flirting. They were flying around the perching stick I had put in the pond specifically for territorial dragonflies.
Only upon closer inspection did I realize that this was not the Cardinal Meadowhawk pair after all, but a new pair: a pair of flame gliders. Flame sliders are larger than cardinal hawks and the males are not red, they are orange. I was excited that two species were mating and laying eggs in the pond on the same day. But they never got to work.
Then I realized. This was not a man and a woman. They were two males fighting for possession of the stick to perch on. The daddy baby Cardinal Meadowhawk on top of the stick was trying to scare away a male flame glider that had invaded his territory.
It was a fierce battle. Leonard and I watched from the shadow of the willow tree.
In the end, the brave little meadow falcon won. He took back his cane. I had always thought that male insects were lazy parents, but here was one that proved me wrong. She kept an eye on her babies long after the mother was gone. In fact, for almost three more weeks, he came back every day and sat on that stick for hours.
On very hot days, he would sit like this, with his tail high. This is called an obelisk and dragonflies do this to keep cool by reducing the surface area exposed to the sun.
Three weeks after the eggs were laid, I was scooping some water out of the pond to see what was there.
and I found some of these. This is a baby dragonfly, a dragonfly nymph. The nymphs feed on small pond creatures, especially mosquito larvae. Every time I show my pond to someone new, they say, “But doesn’t it attract mosquitoes?” and I say, “Yeah! Fortunately, that’s how it is.” Mosquitoes are the main food of dragonflies, both nymphs and adults.
The nymphs hung out in my pond, eating mosquitoes all summer, fall, winter, and well into spring.
and then on May 20th I started finding them on my pond plants. This is the exoskeleton of a dragonfly nymph. When a dragonfly is ready to emerge, the nymph emerges from the water and splits its skin, and the adult dragonfly crawls out, leaving behind this shell, called an exuvia. The white threads are the breathing tubes of your old respiratory system.
I wondered if I could see a dragonfly emerging from the pond.
and then a couple of days later, I did it. It was very strange. First, his head poked out and then he released most of his body. He did a backbend and stayed in that position for a while. Finally, he freed the rest of his body and crouched over the shed skin. At the time it was small, soft, pale and wrinkled, but it began pumping hemolymph (the equivalent of insect blood) throughout its body to inflate itself to its size.
Here it is a little further on. Now it’s starting to look more like a dragonfly. The entire process takes a few hours.
That was at the end of May,
but throughout June and July, I had dozens of these cardinal hawks emerging from my pond, and it was wild. Do you remember the Chestburster scene from Foreign? You get the gist.
Here is the last stage before the dragonfly reaches its final form. Its wings are fully expanded, but it does not yet fly well and has not developed its bright colors. At this stage, it is called teneral. Tenerals are vulnerable to birds and other predators, but they will soon pick up speed and roam the garden.
By September 2022, the adult hawks were gone and I thought dragonfly season was over. That’s when a new character appeared on the scene:
a darker shade. A large dragonfly roared like a helicopter and proceeded to lay eggs on the logs overhanging my pond. She returned regularly to do more of the same and it was a pleasure to see her each time.
I thought it was strange how she laid most of her eggs outside the pond and I wondered if any of her babies would actually hatch.
but the following summer,
I found some of their nymphs in the pond. They were longer and thinner than the baby meadow hawks.
I couldn’t see any adult shadow darners emerge, because they do so at night. But some did come out in August,
and they were waiting for me to release them in the morning. After fighting raccoons many times, I learned that I have to put a net in my pond every night if I don’t want them to destroy it. It’s a hassle, but I think it’s worth it if I can protect these spectacular creatures.
Newly freed, this dark tanneral stayed for a while while he got his bearings. Then he flew away.
There you have the story of how a sad, patchy patch of grass in my backyard became an oasis, a water paradise full of life, in the span of less than a year. What was once barren terrain has become a valuable resource for dragonflies and an endless source of entertainment for me. The water garden has been one of the best things I have added to the landscape.
I love my little pond!
