The magical life of farm ponds

There were once spectacular creatures here. I would watch them on warm nights in early summer. Creatures capable of bizarre metamorphoses, whose legs grew from mere buds. Bugs dressed as stick insects and scorpions. Spiders that spun their webs underwater.

As if upon a forgotten ballroom, newts once danced here, a slow and careful courtship, surrounded on all sides by curtains of lush vegetation made of tangled waterweeds. The rotating movements of a thousand tiny water fleas like lights from a glitter ball. A chorus of water boatmen playing their legs like violins.

I visit this old place once or twice a year, for the memories. This was where I saw my first toad. Where I watched sticklebacks. Where I once saw a grass snake. Now this