Tag Archives: pond

Ramp

Posted on by Bill Chance

“He takes a kitchen chair and sits in the yard and all the ducks come around. He holds up the cheese curls in one hand and caramel popcorn in the other and his audience looks up and he tells them a joke. He says: So one day a duck come into this bar and ordered a whiskey and a bump and the bartender was pretty surprised, he says, “You know we don’t get many of you ducks in here.” The duck says, “At these prices I’m not surprised.* And he tosses out the popcorn and they laugh. ‘Wak wak wak wak wak. I was shot in the leg in the war.’ Have a scar? ‘No thanks, I don’t smoke.”

― Garrison Keillor, Truckstop and Other Lake Wobegon Stories

There’s a park at the end of my block with a couple of flood-control ponds (the drainage from the ponds runs in a creek/ditch behind my house). Despite their utility in times of rain and excessive urban runoff they are quite attractive.

The ponds at the end of my block, Richardson, Texas
Pond at the end of my block, Huffhines Park, Richardson, Texas
The ponds at the end of my block, Richardson, Texas
The ponds at the end of my street, Huffhines Park, Richardson, Texas

My neighborhood is called Duck Creek, because of the eponymous body of water that runs diagonally through the place, but there are also plenty of ducks. This is the time of year that the baby ducks are hatched and groups of them are herded around by their parents.

Huffhines Park Richardsion, Texas (click to enlarge)
They don’t call it Duck Creek for nothing.
Huffhines Creek, Richardson, Texas. My house is in the background to the left. This photo is taken from the little dam and under a bridge.

The problem is that there is a little, low dam at the end of the ponds. The water flows over it – during the summer it’s not much more than a trickle. Unfortunately, often a baby duck gets swept over this dam and separated from their loving duck family. They can’t get back over the dam, even though it isn’t more than a couple feet high.

The rest of the ducks then have to go over the dam to rescue their sibling. Then they have to waddle up the bank and cross a fairly busy street to get back into the pond.

People in my neighborhood have been complaining to the city about this and today, I discovered that there is a new construction project going. The city is making a concrete duckling ramp so that they can get up and over that low dam.

The duckling ramp under construction.

Excuse all the trash in the photo – it tends to collect there – a crew comes by periodically to pick it up.

I’ll go back in a few days, once the wooden forms are removed and see if the little ducks are actually using their ramp – I’m sure they will. Maybe the turtles will too. I’m sure the snakes will.

Does this count as infrastructure?

The Secrets of the World

Posted on by Bill Chance

“The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

Fair Park, Dallas, Texas

When We Stand Uneasy Before Our Own Childish Thoughts

Posted on by Bill Chance

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
― Herman Hesse, Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte

Tree, Huffhines Park, Richardson, Texas, Reflected in water and inverted

Drained the Pond

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Remain in the world, act in the world, do whatsoever is needful, and yet remain transcendental, aloof, detached, a lotus flower in the pond.”
― Osho, The Secret of Secrets

There are these ponds in the park at the end of my block. I think they are mostly there for flood control, but they look great. I’ve taken photos of them over the years.

Pond at the end of my block, Huffhines Park, Richardson, Texas

The ponds at the end of my block, Richardson, Texas

The ponds at the end of my street,
Huffhines Park,
Richardson, Texas

Men Between the Ponds

Men Between the Ponds

The ponds are surrounded by hiking/biking trails – it’s on my work bicycling commute. I always enjoy riding past or around the ponds – except on the days/times that the trail is too crowded.

Not too long ago, I noticed a guy sitting by the pond watching his black lab out in the water. The dog wasn’t far from shore – but still the water barely came up to his dog knees. That’s when I realized the ponds are a lot shallower than they look. They must be silted full.

Sure enough, a couple weeks ago, as I rode to work, I noticed an orange temporary fence around the pond and machines installing huge sheets of plywood, making a road to the water’s edge on the other side of the pond. Then, some workers started visiting the pond all day and night, using big portable pumps to empty the water out.

Then came in the giant shovel machines to scoop out the black muck. It was so vile and watery they had to lime it and then stir the mix with the long arms of the shovel buckets to stabilize it enough to scoop it into waiting trucks. The smell was awful – that mud had a lot of grass clippings, trash, and who knows what mixed with it and it had been sitting down there underwater for years.

One day there was an elderly woman sitting on a bench with her tiny dog held in her lap. They both were watching the machines work – unbothered by the smell of the muck and the diesel fumes from the straining engines. Everybody else seemed to be ignoring the scene.

Finally, they seem to have finished. I wondered what the bottom of the ponds would be like – they were too  big to be concrete lined. I forgot that there is caliche limestone only a few feet below the surface (that’s why nobody in Dallas has a basement) and it looks like they scooped some of the rock out (it isn’t very strong) when they made the ponds – making big oval saucer-shaped indentations in the earth.

The equipment is being loaded up – I guess they will start letting the ponds fill in now. The calendar says fall – but it’s still summer here in Texas – not sure how long until we get enough rain… we’ll see. When they are filled I guess they will look exactly the same as they did before. Deep water looks just like shallow.

The drained and scooped pond at Huffhines Park.

The caliche limestone at the bottom of the pond. Huffhines park, Richardson, Texas.

Very Secure In the Pond That You Are In

Posted on by Bill Chance

“We can’t be afraid of change. You may feel very secure in the pond that you are in, but if you never venture out of it, you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean, a sea. Holding onto something that is good for you now, may be the very reason why you don’t have something better.”
― C. JoyBell C.

Pond at the end of my block, Huffhines Park, Richardson, Texas

Like White Bread To Goldfish

Posted on by Bill Chance

“but nothing I ever gave was good for you;
it was like white bread to goldfish.
they cram and cram, and it kills them,
and they drift in the pool, belly-up,
making stunned faces
and playing on our guilt
as if their own toxic gluttony
was not their own fault

there you are, still outside the window,
still with your hands out, still
pallid and fish-eyed, still acting
stupidly innocent and starved.”
― Margaret Atwood, Morning in the Burned House

Goldfish Pond, Dallas Arboretum

Saggitaria Platyphylla (Delta Duckpotato)

Posted on by Bill Chance

Leonhardt Lagoon, Fair Park, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)

Leonhardt Lagoon, Fair Park, Dallas, Texas
(click to enlarge)

I made it a point on the Stop and Photograph the Roses bike ride to swing by Fair Park. I love the Art Deco architecture, sculpture, and murals there. Plus, there is Leonhardt Lagoon, with the incredible 1986 walk-on sculpture by Patricia Johanson, Saggitaria Platyphylla (Delta Duckpotato).

“The lagoon was in the middle of Dallas’ largest park with four major museums along the shore, and it seemed a wonderful opportunity to convert it into a home for native wildlife—ducks, turtles, fish, shrimp, insects—by cleaning up the water and conceiving of landscaping as food. The “sculpture” was thought of as not just aesthetic, but rather a means of bringing people into contact with the plants and animals and the water.”
—-Patricia Johanson

It’s interesting, but there really is a Sagittaria Platyphylla (Delta Duckpotato) – it’s a water weed. The only thing is, the real thing is spelled slightly differently than the title of the sculpture (one G, two T’s). I’m sure she did this on purpose – for something of this size, you want to get it right.

Saggitaria Platyphylla (Delta Duckpotato)

Saggitaria Platyphylla (Delta Duckpotato)

Saggitaria Platyphylla (Delta Duckpotato)

Saggitaria Platyphylla (Delta Duckpotato)

Saggitaria Platyphylla (Delta Duckpotato)

Saggitaria Platyphylla (Delta Duckpotato)

Pond at Fair Park

A pond in Fair Park. The red paths are part of a massive sculpture by Patricia Johanson. I have always loved those red paths running through the water, weeds, and turtles. A neglected jewel in the city.