08/05/2026
For those who don’t know, we moved into a new home about four months ago. It’s a really big deal for us, and we are , but also wildly overwhelmed with it all. I feel like we took a beautiful home and kind of dumped our mess onto the property (literal and theoretical). But, I am determined that we will be focusing on home and family this year, and we will be working on projects to try and make our house a home.
Project one was to remove a plastic backyard pond and 🤞🏻 replace it with a rock garden. I have always wanted a rock garden! The pond can be beautiful again and I know my children are a bit bummed to be losing it, but the space where the pond is, is where our outside pets have access to and it’s only a matter of time until someone gets sick from drinking stagnant water.
I looked into ways to remove the pond and it got to be too much, so Rob and I just grabbed some buckets and started filling and dumping. Filling and dumping. As we are about 2/3rds of the way done, I see movement in the water, a lot of movement. I excitedly grab my Seek (I am obsessed with the Seek app) and they are (possibly) Northwestern salamanders. They are in all different life stages and sizes! Super exciting, but also now our first project as come to a halt.
We covered the pond with a fence grid and some concrete slabs to keep the outside animals from drinking. I emailed the Necanicum Watershed and they kindly responded with information about the salamanders. Seems we are lucky to have had the opportunity to see them when we did because the website they sent says that adult salamanders are rarely seen because they live underground, so, we fancy. I’ll add the link so you can check it out for yourself, it’s a great website with lots of information and photos!
So, until we figure out how to remove the pond without hurting the salamanders, we will have an eyesore, but also a super cool salamander land in our backyard!
www.odfw.com/wildlife-viewing/species/salamanders
