For obvious reasons, I had to break the post on the park into 2 again. This focuses more on the pond, or what I call the heart and life of the park. Without it, it would likely be just any other ordinary neighbourhood park.Did you know that the pond was not covered with Lotus all the while? It used to be filled with amazingly beautiful pink and white-flower Water Lilies. Then out of a sudden, all of them perished within a couple of weeks.
What took over was the appearance of a golden pond, which was in fact an algal bloom - brought about by eutrophication of the pond and low dissolved oxygen resulting in the formation of a layer of algal cells that was orange at the crack of dawn and turned green by dusk.
To cut the long story short, the Lotus eventually took over the pond surface, and since then the park is popularly known for its lotus pond. Back then, I planted single- and double-petaled pink and white Lotus but what remains is the single-petaled pink flower variety. Every day, it is not unusual to find lots of Red-Ear Slider terrapins (scientific name: Trachemys scripta elegans) lining the pond edge and suntanning themselves. When I got too near, a few of them conveniently threw themselves over the edge into the pond.
Farewell to the park since I would unlikely return to this place for a long time to come.
