I spent almost all fo this glorious 70+ degree day outside fiddling around in the pond. "Fiddling" as in cleaning, adding plants, scooping out dead tadpoles...

Yeah, two of the "newbies" I added last week didn't make it.

But I made an incredible discovery: a bullfrog tadpole that I put in the pond at the beginning of the fall survived the winter and came out of his hiding/hibernation place under a pile of decaying leaves at the bottom of the pond. This dude is HUGE. Actually he's almost horrifically scary - think of a big snake head with a thin, fish-like tail and that's pretty close to what I have swimming around, sucking algae off the plants and rocks. Two of the new tads are still alive and scuttling about, and of course my lone but gorgeous goldfish thiks she's queen of the pond.

But she isn't alone...

Apparently she had just enough time with some fish I imported to the pond at the end of the summer last year to spawn. All of those pet store fish died. My large goldfish remained and stayed the winter. I noticed during a warm patch of weather we had in december that there was a tiny little grey guy swimming around - likely her offspring. Well "Pee Wee", as we call him, is still alive and is spending much of his time in the shallow parts fo the pond, scraping algae from rocks and pebbles.

So the three swimmy survivors include a beautiful 6+inch long goldfish - she looks like a cross between a shubukin and a comet; a year-old bullfrog tad, who is starting to get leg buds, and a goldfish fry about 1" long. Also include inthe "survivor" category an uncountable number of japanese trapdoor snails of varing generations,  a multitude of seed-size common pond snails, and a decent amount of duckweek plants.

I'm concerned that once the Big Tadpole (as we call him) morphs to carnivorous from algae-eater that my fish will be in danger. I just hope that there are enough insects flitting about the water's edge to distract him.