13 Feb. 2008.
Haven't written anything for a month. Guess the national holiday mood has really got hold of me... But I finally emptied the goose pond a couple of weeks ago, as all the tadpoles had satisfactorily metamorphosed to toads and gone (hope they grow nicely during the summer and survive the winter, so we can get back - at least in my garden! - to our heretofore usual large population of anurae. This is the first year, in the nine that I've been living in this neighbourhood, that I've had to start using a mosquito repellent apparatus to be able to sleep. The problem of reduced frog/toad population has been compounded by an unusually wet summer, and the wretched insects are actually forcing their way into the house through the wire netting on the windows.
This morning, as I was adding fresh water to the pond, I discovered a large, dark grey-brown moth with big, tear-shaped white spots on its wings, resting under the cluster of small yellow orchids on the mulberry tree. A very beautiful species I had never seen before. I suspect it may be one of the animals whose tropical range has moved south with global warming - together with the mosquitos!
It never rains but what it pours! The very day I accepted my first book translation, which will keep me busy for two months, my good friend BenjamÃn asked me to make him a 4-metre draconian ceramics serpent for his garden. So I've put off the serpent until the autumn - Benjie doesn't mind waiting, he's an angel - and will save up money from the translation to get my workshop going again. Oh, Joy!!!
