In late August of 2021, I put in a different kind of garden—a water garden. I dug a hole in my backyard. It was six feet long, four-and-a-half feet wide, and two feet deep at the deepest point.

I put in a pond liner, and I filled it with water.

I trimmed off the excess liner, and I buried the edges and tamped them down.

Then I covered up the edges with rocks and logs, and I put in some water plants. I put in a small water lily (Nymphaea ‘Sioux’), one swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), one marsh marigold (Caltha palustris), one wapato (Sagittaria latifolia), two gray rushes (Juncus patens), two slough sedges (Carex obnupta), and a handful of western milfoil (Myriophyllum hippuroides), an underwater oxygenator.

Here’s what the area looked like several years ago, when we first moved in.

And here’s what it looked like this past year. This has become my favorite part of the garden.

I didn’t put any fish in my pond, because I was hopeful that this would become a dragonfly pond, and fish eat baby dragonflies.

I was not disappointed. In July of the following year, I saw two cardinal meadowhawk dragonflies mating by the pond. I don’t know if you’ve ever caught dragonflies in the act, but when they mate, they do it in this strange position. It’s called a mating wheel.

The male is the bright red one, and the female is more of a rusty-orange color. You’ll notice the male is grabbing the female by the head. He has pincers on the tip of his abdomen, which he uses to hang onto his lady friend.

When his partner is ready to lay her eggs, the male doesn’t let go, because he doesn’t want any other males to mate with her. He drags her around by the head, dipping her tail end into the water over and over again, so she can deposit her eggs—their eggs.

Later that day, I saw the couple at the pond again, flirting with each other. They were flying around the perching stick that I had put in the pond specifically for the territorial dragonflies.

Only upon closer inspection, I realized this wasn’t the cardinal meadowhawk couple after all, but a new couple—a pair of flame skimmers. Flame skimmers are larger than cardinal meadowhawks, and the males aren’t red—they’re orange. I was excited to have two species mate and lay eggs in the pond on the same day. But they never got down to business.

Then it dawned on me. This wasn’t a male and a female. These were two males, fighting for possession of the perching stick. The cardinal meadowhawk baby daddy at the top of the stick was trying to drive off a male flame skimmer who had invaded his territory.

It was a fierce battle. Leonard and I looked on from the shadow of the willow tree.

In the end, the plucky little meadowhawk won. He got his stick back. I’d always thought that male insects were deadbeat dads, but here was one who proved me wrong. He stood guard over his babies long after the mother had left. In fact, for almost three more weeks, he came back every day and sat on that perching stick for hours.

On very hot days, he would sit like this, with his tail end high in the air. This is called obelisking, and dragonflies do it to stay cool by reducing their surface area that is exposed to the sun.

Three weeks after the eggs were laid, I was scooping some water out of the pond to see what was in there,

and I found some of these. This is a baby dragonfly, a dragonfly nymph. Nymphs live off of small creatures in the pond, especially mosquito larvae. Every time I show my pond to someone new, they say “But doesn’t it attract mosquitoes?”, and I say, “Yes! Thankfully, it does.” Mosquitoes are prime food for dragonflies—both the nymphs and the adults.

The nymphs hung out in my pond, eating mosquitoes all summer, fall, winter, and well into spring,

and then on May 20, I began to find these on my pond plants. This is the shed exoskeleton of a dragonfly nymph. When a dragonfly is ready to emerge, the nymph crawls out of the water and splits its skin, and the adult dragonfly crawls out, leaving behind this shell, called an exuvia. The white threads are the breathing tubes of its old respiratory system.

I wondered if I would get to see a dragonfly actually emerging from the pond,

and then a couple days later, I did. It was freaky as hell. First, its head popped out, and then it wriggled most of its body free. It did a backbend and stayed in that position for a while. Eventually, it freed the rest of its body and hunkered down on top of its shed skin. It was small, soft, pale, and wrinkled at that point, but it began to pump hemolymph—the insect equivalent of blood—throughout its body to inflate itself up to size.

Here it is a little farther along. It’s starting to look a lot more like a dragonfly now. The whole process takes a few hours.

So that was in late May,

but all through June and into July, I had dozens of these cardinal meadowhawks emerging from my pond, and it was wild. Remember the Chestburster scene from Alien? You get the gist.

Here’s the last stage before the dragonfly achieves its final form. Its wings are fully expanded, but it’s not a strong flier yet, and it hasn’t developed its bright colors. At this stage, it’s called a teneral. Tenerals are vulnerable to birds and other predators, but they will soon get up to speed and be zipping around the garden.

By September of 2022, the adult meadowhawks had disappeared, and I figured dragonfly season was over. That’s when a new character appeared on the scene:

a shadow darner. A large dragonfly, she roared in like a helicopter and proceeded to lay eggs on the logs overhanging my pond. She returned regularly to do more of the same, and it was a delight to see her each time.

I thought it was weird how she laid most of her eggs outside the pond, and I wondered if any of her babies would actually hatch,

but the following summer,

I did find some of her nymphs in the pond. They were longer and thinner than the baby meadowhawks.

I didn’t get to see any adult shadow darners emerge, because they do it at night. But a few did come out in August,

and they were waiting for me to free them in the morning. After battling the raccoons many times, I learned that I have to net my pond every night if I don’t want it trashed. It’s a hassle, but I think it’s worth it if I can protect these spectacular creatures.

Newly freed, this shadow darner teneral hung out for a spell while it got its bearings. Then it flew away.

Thus, there you have the story of how a sad, patchy piece of lawn in my backyard became an oasis—a watery wonderland full of life—in the span of less than one year. What was once a barren patch of land has become a valuable resource for dragonflies and an endless source of entertainment for me. The water garden has been one of the best things I’ve ever added to the landscape.

I love my little pond!