Rocks, water, newts and cats

[iainjclark]

When last we left our struggling hero he was attempting to build a pond. Thwarted at every turn by the evils of pond liner, water, and pretty much all the other things you need to make a pond, not to mention gravity, it would be fair to say that he was making a bit of a meal of it.

Now read on...

So over the last couple of weekends we've continued pottering with the pond, on and off. It's still not finished but now looks a lot more complete.

I must confess there was a stage after I'd done most of the rocks that I felt pretty fed up with it. We don't have the budget or heavy lifting equipment to throw great slabs of rock into the ground as if a mountain spring had coincidentally thrust its way out of the earth in the corner of our garden. As a result it's fairly small and stylised, and has an awful lot of cobbles and small rocks in heaps. However since Janet put some plants in I'm feeling much more positive. It looks like what it is: a nice, small garden pond. It's certainly tranquil.

This was the before picture. Here's a photo from earlier today:



And here's one from above, avec cat. Possibly the cat is for scale.



We've still got lots more plants to come, and a pump so that we can get the stream running. Hopefully some wildlife may move in. I found two more newts in the garden today (Palmate Newts I think), one tiny and one pretty sizeable (about three inches long) so you never know. Sadly I didn't think to get a photo, but if they do move in I'll take a few close-ups. Janet's got some pond snails in the water already who seem to be thriving and/or getting amorous, and the oxygenating plants are in, so we may yet have a semi-wildlife pond.

I'm quite pleased.

Comments

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

Nice pond, dude :-)

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

Ta!

[tinimaus.livejournal.com]

I think that works quite nicely the way you have graded the pebble-to-stone sizes.

Well done :-).

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[melody-dizzy.livejournal.com]

That's looking really good, if you know someone with an established pond, ask if you can have some water from it, (I grabbed some in a watering can from one) as it will put in all the bio-cultures needed for a healthy pond and it won't cost anything, it'll have all sorts of wee beasties in it as well for bigger beasties to eat when they find your pond ;-)

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

Sadly we don't know anyone with a pond but it's a good idea and I'd definitely do it if we could.

[melody-dizzy.livejournal.com]

Is there anywhere near you with a natural pond? rather than a neighbour, I think I'm a bit far away for my pond to answer the purpose. I actually got mine from a museum which had 20 acres of gardens including a pond. Do you have anything like that near you? Country parks, that kind of thing. You could take a big lemonade bottle and fill that, it would be enough :-)