No telling who will join the band in our backyard Eden

In our backyard, nestled among the tea roses, phlox and alyssum, is a black iron fountain with a fluted bowl atop a pedestal rising from a stone-ringed basin at the bottom. It is not the spouting kind of fountain. Rather, it drips softly into the water below, filling the garden with a liquid music to serve as background to the birdsong.

And by late summer, as the mosses carpet the damp stones where droplets moisten them day and night, the fountain looks as if it might have been there for hundreds of years, as if it had grown from the ground and been discovered by us rather than placed there by hand.

It is calming on a cool summer’s morning or a drowsy dusk to sit by the fountain and listen to its gentle music. If there is a heaven, there must be fountains just like this one in gardens where blossoms never fade.

But the other day I noticed a hint of trouble in our little backyard paradise.

Because the flow of water is so gentle in the fountain’s basin, every female mosquito in the neighborhood thought she had died and gone to heaven, too. They had established a proper little nursery there in the basin, and by now dozens of their little springtail offspring were cartwheeling through the water.

I considered my options and decided to turn to the Internet, which knows all things.

Bleach was mentioned as a quick, cheap alternative to hosting a herd of blood-suckers. Or maybe chlorine or the brominating tablets used in spas or pools.

But I wasn’t sure how the cardinals, finches, and wrens would feel about any of those choices when they came to drink. I didn’t want to send them to heaven any earlier than they were scheduled to depart for those celestial gardens.

And then an Internet item caught my eye: How about goldfish?

Our grandson Evan agreed that was a splendid option. He even volunteered to pick them out at the local pet store.

And so, two dollars later (including sales tax), we became the proud ranchers of a herd of goldfish, a half-dozen strong.

Actually, it would be wrong to call all the members of the herd “goldfish,” because one of them wore a mottled shade of gray on his finny flanks. Still, the five goldies seemed to accept him without prejudice, proof that their new fountain home was a peaceful hint of heavens ahead.

We left the placement of the herd to Evan, and he decided that two of them should go into the fluted bowl at the top of the fountain, with the other four taking residence in the basin.

And so, with four goldies swimming below and a goldie and a gray-ie up top, I asked him if he had named them yet.

“Well, this one is Simon,” he said, pointing to the goldie in the penthouse.

“How about this one?” I asked, pointing to Simon’s gray companion.

He looked at me as if the answer were too obvious to ask. “Grayfunkel,” he said.

Of course. Simon and Grayfunkel. A finny match made in heaven.

He hadn’t gotten around to naming the goldies in the basin yet, which was just as well since they were so similar they could hardly be told apart from each other. Or from Penthouse Simon, for that matter.

For now, we just refer to the gang in the basement as the Cellar Simons.

And they all seem to be adjusting to their new digs just fine.

The springtails have vanished, which was the plan all along. As an added bonus, the Simons and Grayfunkel have acquired a taste for the algae that keeps trying to fur the inside of the bowl and basin with green. A little salad to go with their cartwheeling protein main course, I guess.

Penthouse Simon seems particularly happy with the arrangement. He spends most of the day doing lazy laps around the fluted bowl,while Grayfunkel watches. A flashy show-off with an appreciative audience.

The Cellar Simons seem a bit more sedate about the whole thing. They spend their day quietly probing the nooks and crannies to be found around the base of the pedestal that rises from the basin.

In short, it seems like heaven for everyone but the mosquitoes.

Still, I worry about things to come, because this morning I found a fat toad swimming around the basin as the Cellar Simons watched from below. Toads may look like frogs, but they aren’t nearly as comfortable in water, so I lifted the porky interloper from the basin and nestled him in my palm for a while. He seemed happy to get some rest from doing the breast stroke, which may have continued through most of the night. Any longer and he might have croaked.

“Coming to join the band?” I asked him, and I wondered what his name might be. He looked pudgy enough to be a latter-day Elvis. Or maybe a warty Meat Loaf.

In any case, I released him under the ferns at the side of the house where he would be less likely to find his way back to join the Cellar Simon quartet, and he scurried into the cool shade.

But now I worry about who I might find tomorrow morning trying to harmonize with the Cellar Simons once the word gets out that they are in town. A Springsteen salamander? A Dylan dragonfly?

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how the heavenly band shapes up.

• Author, musician, and sto¬ryteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Con¬tact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.

---