I’ve got a backlog of pictures from last weekend to get out over the next few days. My major accomplishment Sunday was repairing the water garden. The warm winter was easy on the fish. (The spring-fed pool was frozen over only maybe a dozen nights all season.) But the freezing and thawing heaved the surrounding soil and sent a lot of the edging stones into the water. It was a real mess:
I straightened things out as best I could, hauled out the whiskey-barrel liner with the mini-water lilies, and trimmed the dead foliage off the potted emergents. But I’ve got to dig up or buy some flat stones and rebuild the edges or this is only going to get worse.
The ugly pile with the pond liner scraps in the background is going to be my ‘mud man’ sculpture. More on that project as it evolves.
Craig, I can empathize having dug out a 1000 gallon pond. Fortunately, for some reason we don’t get too much frost heave where the pond is located. Probably because of the clay soil and it’s in a dry spot close to the house. You could try digging a drainage trench around the pond right at the edge of the liner to try to dry out the area.
I’m glad to see that Fred was around to keep you on task. I bet he makes a great foreman. 😉
That is one task I have yet to deal with..cleaning out the pond. Nothing like a little anaerobic bacteria to clean out the sinuses! What kind of filtration system do you have? I am considering a ‘veggie’ filter but that will entail building a new pond and will have to wait until fall or next spring or, perhaps retirement. So many jobs, so little time!
Ki: That sounds like a good plan, except that whole area is riddled with springs. When I dug out the area, I actually hit a cheezy dry well and drainage pipe — as well as water flowing into the hole about 3 feet down at a pretty amazing rate. And this was after the surface had dried out pretty much. I actually have slit the liner to accomodate the drain and to allow the spring water to flow into the pool.
Layanee: I don’t have any filtration system. Water flows through the pond continously during the summer. It’s not a lot, but it stays pretty cool even when the weather is hot. The water lillies provide some shade, though I still have a decent amount of algae that I skim out from time to time. It’s good fertilizer for the adjacent beds.
Now that’s a good one! You usually have a liner to keep the water in.