The Curling Pond.

Here we have "The Lothians Amphibian and Reptile Group" doing some basic maintenance of our curling pond although, I don't believe that anyone has curled on it for the last hundred years, nor that anyone will, ever again. The work is to clear the reeds that cover most of the water, but they are stirring up the mud which is making a terrible stench.
For the last twenty years, this has been a small nature reserve created by the local heritage society, it is home to most of the species of amphibian resident in the British Isles and many varieties of dragonfly. It is also frequented by a fair amount of bird life including raptors (kestrels, sparrow hawks and buzzards) and a resident heron.

As we know from experiences with our own garden pond, the natural history is such that the fertility increases due to manure dropped by the local fauna, the vegetation flourishes and decomposing matter settles on the bottom until, eventually, the latter rises above the water level and you no longer have a pond.

In my youth, I did a lot of cycling in the Lea Valley where there is a village, that has been engulfed by London, called Ponders End. The story was that a ponder, the workman who maintained the dew ponds, used to work his way along a set route from one pond to the next, it would probably take him several years, until he eventually reached the end of the line at a place subsequently named Ponders End.
Wikipedia has it that the village was the "end or quarter of the parish associated with the Ponder family." However, I feel that this is a less attractive explanation than mine. Douglas Adams (in "The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy") maintains that, where beauty and reality are in conflict, it is reality that is at fault and so I ask you to accept my version of events.