I am utterly thrilled. In a short break from designing an exhibition about how wonderful microbes are, I popped outside to take the compost to the compost bin and walked past my new pond. It was only built a relatively short time ago and to be honest, I’ve been struggling with keeping nitrogen levels down in it so it’s a constant battle to pull out what I call “blanket weed”, which I now know, since studying such things, is algae that thrives in nitrogen rich water. The nitrogen content of the pond increases when leaves and other bits of organic matter get into the water and decompose.

Occasionally, since I put it in, I see an odd frog, newt or toad swimming about in it but never very many and never any spawn. Last spring this BOB went walking on the moor and saw that many of the puddles on the path were teeming with tadpoles and the puddles were rapidly drying out. I went home, got a load of plastic bags and carrier bags, went back and scooped as many tadpoles as I could into the bags, sealed them then brought them home in carrier bags. I put them into my pond, which is quite deep, at its deepest about 3 feet deep so it isn’t in any real danger of drying out.

There were gazillions of the little critters swimming around and generally enjoying life. They would certainly have died had they been left in the puddles because two days later we walked the same path and found the puddles completely dried out and lots of little black blobs in the mud. They were the ones I hadn’t managed to save.

Obviously in a big garden it’s difficult to keep tabs on the baby froglets but I did know that they were fairly likely to get predated either by our own hens or by the many wild animals that populate our garden. So, imagine my surprise and thrill to find a mass of spawn at quite a late stage of development even though they have no clear signs of tails and limbs yet, they are certainly showing signs of “lumpiness”. I wonder if the spawn comes from my rescued taddies? I believe they are sexually mature at around a year so they could well be. If so, what a triumph for a BOB who couldn’t bear to see them slowly fried by the sun in their puddles.

It’s certain that if any of my neighbours were watching me from their windows kneeling in mud on the path on the hill opposite filling up my bags with muddy puddle water then they would have thought – there goes Linda, batty old bird.

This photo is "living" proof that restarting my PAD was a good idea. I was able to look back through my old PADs to find the pic of the pond when it was first put in, something I wouldn't have been able to do if I'd not been doing a PAD. Now, I can look back at this year's photos and see what I was doing and when.

Hmm today my readability rating is 65%. Bang on the ideal. My grade score is over ten though – must try harder! My beigeness score isn't improving - I reckon that one must be standing at around 2.