Pond lining begins!

This is Himself having a short break after we'd finished dry lining the pond with sand which had gone through our awesome home made sieve!

The photo also shows the width of the shelf I'd made for plants and rocks. It widens out under the sieve and stays that wide all down the rest of that side.

The square block in the bottom of the pond is one of 4 blocks put in place to rest the tea house legs on - oh yes, my 'little veranda' plan grew a bit (aided and abetted by Himself and our dear friend Pete) and will now have a veranda big enough to need legs!

We had some much bedrock residue that we had to pinch part of the vegetable garden to store it - hence the large pile behind Himself. This did, of course, mean that I couldn't grow quite my usual quantity of veg, but it's only a temporary thing and I will get a fabby Japanese garden and, eventually, my full veg patch back - seems like a reasonable compromise under the circumstances!

Himself just finishing smoothing the shelf sand. You can clearly see the blocks where the tea house legs will go.

The bit of shelf that Himself is kneeling on will become my pebble beach - unlikely as that may seem at this point!

This is me, the Nutty Gnome, finishing off putting the fleece liner in place - an 'interesting' job as as the little tiny pebbles slid down the back and Himself was convinced that every single one of them would cause an enormous hole if it wasn't fished out........!

(I didn't get them all out!)

The wooden stake at the bottom right of the picture was for levels and to denote roughly where the waterfall/ stream would run.

We enlisted our best friends, Jackie and Chris, plus assorted teenage offspring from both families to help us lay the liner - it's amazing what the offer of beer and chillie can do!

The butyl liner was flippin' heavy!

It took 6 of us to carry it up the garden and into the pond.

Heaven only knows what I was trying to explain to Owen - but it obviously worked as the liner got properly laid out in the end!

Part of the 'Liner Team' at work.

You can tell it was early spring due to the lack of runner beans up the poles behind Himself.

Mind you, the blackcurrant bushes and raspberry canes look good!