Digressions continued

Hmm, I've not really got the hang of saving everything before I go off to edit pictures or whatever! Anyway, I'll carry on where I left off - I hope.

Above is Himself doing a bit of digging for me. The fruit cage is the topside of him and part of the vegetable garden is to the left of him. We have to cage and net a lot of our stuff because the birds, squirrels, foxes and badgers eat them or dig them up!

We are only about 10 minutes walk from the centre of town, but are lucky enough to have a large garden, with a disused small reservoir just beyond our top boundary (- through the trees beyond the fruit cage). For history buffs, the reservoir was built in the late victorian period but was only used to supply the town for a few years until they realised that having a reservoir above the town on a hilltop was, perhaps, not the best thing to do! It is now privately owned and used for fishing. The land around is has been pretty much left to run wild, hence all the animals - it's great!

This is the pond at its finished depth. The pipes sticking out on the right will eventually bring the water back up from the bottom pond and take it through the filter system.

The scaffold tower on the left houses our home made giant seive! We used it to grade all the sandstone debris that we removed from the hole and turn it into reasonable quality sand which was good enough to dry line the hole to cover any lumps, bumps and sharp bits before the fleece liner went on top of it.

It was a simple but boring process but it quickly produced as much sand as we needed. When I was dry lining, I could just about keep up with the amount Himself was producing.

At this point, we had reused everything that we'd dug out, so we were soil neutral - which appeals to the eco warrior in both me and Himself!

This is the pond dry lined - I feel able to call it a pond at this stage as it actually looks like one!

It had spent the previous winter as a very sad looking leaf gathering place and I had felt leadened by the distinct lack of progress.

Ceefa cat on quality control!

The cat was always very interested in whatever I was doing in the garden and often tried to help - mainly by pouncing on and trying to kill whatever I was using!