The mission for this visit in Buxton Heath was to dig a pond for the breeding of the dragonflies.

I had never expected that digging a pond was sooooooo difficult! The hardest part was to dig out the surface mud which was so deeply and intricately connected with the roots of the plants down into the surface. The clever way to do this was to use the sharp end of the shovel to cut into the mud and make a square, and then use the shovel to lift up the cubic shape of the mud. Sounds easy? Not at all. First you needed to have enough weight to make the sharp end of the shovel go into the mud. Although it was mud, its hardness was comparable to a rock! So the best way to overcome this was to jump your feet onto the shovel and so using your entire body weight to push the shovel down into the mud. Well, although I knew this was the best way to do it, I did not follow it because… I knew if I did I would slip over the shovel and fall over - the surface area of the shovel was very small and I was quite clumsy at this kind of “stunt”.

If digging the surface mud was so difficult, digging the non-surface mud should be easier, right? Yes, less difficult, but… still difficult for me. The non-surface mud was softer and less intricated than the surface mud, but nevertheless heavy, plus the weight of the shovel, god, I wish I could ask help from Giant Goliath.

If digging mud was difficult, maybe transporting the mud dug-out with a barrow would be easier. That was what I thought at first. So when the volunteer who worked with the barrow took a break, I volunteered to transport the mud with the barrow. My god! It was so heavy that at first I could not turn around the barrow which was pointing at a backward direction and then I could not make it move even for an inch! What made me feel ashamed was that that volunteer was an old man and he had moved the mud with the barrow back and forth for several times. (In fact, one of the volunteers who participated in digging the surface mud was also an old man.)

Due to the hard work of the volunteers (except me), we finished the pond-digging in about an hour. But we did not need to fill up the pond with water. It would fill up itself with water in one day - the water from the neighouring mud would slowly diffuse into the pond. Amazing.