The Pond Building Saga Continues!

 Right, a bit of a warning before we start....it's a long one this one! You might want to pop to the loo, make a nice cup of tea or get a glass of your favourite tipple to keep you company as we go! We're off back to last summer again.
Before we could start on the bottom pond properly, we had to sort out the waterfall stone out of the top pond - it's never straightforward is it?! The waterfall stone was a 50p offcut from the local stonemason's scrap pile a few years ago and was never a brilliant stone. It really didn't like the hard winters of 2010 and 2011 - the frost and snow caused it to split along its natural striations and the top pond slowly went down by about 3 inches, which was somewhat worrying at first as we spotted the water level drop but didn't know the cause. I spent ages one weekend carefully working my way around the entire edge of the pond, moving stones, checking that the edge support hadn't failed, looking for tears etc, but all to no avail - which left a split waterfall stone as the only answer.

We aquired an old stone step from somewhere (but I can't remember where as it was so long ago!), which was a bit big and needed cutting to size.I shifted the streamside stones out of the way then Himself and I gently peeled the glued liner away from the original, broken stone, lifted it out....and it fell to pieces, so at least our deduction about the cause of the water level drop was proved correct!!!

The only time Himself really pays heed to the old 'elf n safety' is when he's using the chainsaw or the stone cutter and duely kevlar gatered, gloved and helmetted up he set about cutting the stone to size, having measured and checked several times each side that had to be cut .
It has to be said at this point that our dear, happy, cheerful neighbour Mrs AnotherBloodyEyesore was absolutely delighted by the stone cutting and yelled jaunty encouragement over the hedge at us for a good ten minutes! She is such a joy! ;-P

Once cutting was completed Himself put it in place and tickled about with it until it was completely level.

 Then he stuck the liner onto it.....

 made a little dam wall out of gaffer tape to check his levels

and we filled the pond back up to its original and correct level. After two years of low water it was lovely to have it back to normal again....however, I then had to try and retro-fit all the streamside stones back into their old - and sometimes new places.

It didn't end upquite the same as previously, but I was still happy with the result.

Himself had a little respite from playing with big boys toys by spending time packing sand onto the shelves on the bottom pond in preparation for the arty-farty stone placement. Last-Born, as you can see, was fully engaged in the whole pond building process and in there getting down and dirty with us - not!

 The following weekend The Wonderful Pete (TWP) came up to help. He has done this so often that there is no way we can ever repay his imense kindness....other than with lots of good food and nice wine or beer when he's with us, obviously!
Anyway, we started off shifting the stones onto the pond shelf using  the scaffold poles to hoist them in.....

but the second stone bent the pole, so we had to bring the big guns in! Given that we  were working on a sloping site with veeeeerrrrry heavy stones, it seemed prudent to fill the trugs with stones and put them on the scaffold boards for a bit of extra ballast.....just in case! It may not be elegant, but it does work.

 With lots of hoisting, pulling, puffing, panting and just the occasional  rude word,

we got the big rocks in  place along the back of the pond to create a supporting wall

and then down the far side of the pond where the shelf is at its widest point.

Once the big rocks were in their 'right' places ...which did involve shifting one or two of them into different places a couple of times until the Art Department (me) was happy with them...even if Himself and TWP were less than impressed with me! I then hoiked various smaller stones around happily for about 3 weeks, or maybe it just felt like that?! until I was happy with the overall effect.

Then we ran the stream to get the levels in the bottom pond right and see how it all looked.

Somehow, somewhere along the way, even though the pond's hard landscaping wasn't complete some plants managed to jump in and get settled down...don't know how that happened! I then spent some time building up the bottom part of the stream and the waterfall - contrary to popular family belief, this was NOT faffing about with rocks and stones, this was serious naturalisation of an artificial pond!
It's surprisingly hard to get it right!
I then moved onto the not-yet-garden and planted various plants that I nicked from other parts of the garden and some grotty unloved Hebes I bought for pennies from the 'rescue' table at the local garden centre.

Once I'd finally finished playing getting it to the point where I was happy with it, it all got left until a couple of weeks ago - yes folks, this year!!! when I decided that I really couldn't bear the lack of proper garden or skanky, messy and frankly slightly unsafe hotchpotch of flagstones and mud that made up part of the still unfinished path for a minute longer. So I started off by transplanting all the 'mind your own business', moss and other ground covering plants that had been taking over aprts of the path that has been in situ for 2 or 3 years so that I had a clear view of things first. It took a surprisingly long time to do that!

I followed this up with a bit of excavating down to the sandstone path  foundations I'd put in about 4 years ago (things really don't happen quickly on this project!) and getting the levels right, followed by a few hours of digging of slots to get the old roof tiles in to create a nice level edge to both sides of the path - aided by a bit of stick carefully broken to the right length to act as my path-width measurer ...technology? Bhah!
and finished off by laying the weed supressant membrane and covering it in a couple of inches of pea gravel......followed by some serious arty-farty pretty gravel soothing to make me happy! Doesn't take much does it?! :-P

So I now have a complete and safe route to both bridges....and as it's a bit steep in places I might well end up putting stepping stones into the gravel as I suspect I may find lots of gravel down by the bottom bridge!

The plants in the pond were put in last year, as were most of the plants around the edges, but I have plans! They mainly involve Hebes, Box balls, moss and the like, but possibly not more bamboo - unless a very pretty one catches my eye!

To finish off then, a little quiz!

Spot the name of one of my favourite films in this photo! A smugness award to the first person to get it :-)

Disaster!

Apologies for not being around peoples' blogs much these past few weeks - life got a little bit hectic and something had to give!

Anyway, back to my disaster...........!

Last July I was merrily pootling my way up the garden to pick some fruit and veg for tea a couple of weeks after the purlin ring had been put onto the tea house roof when I became aware of a strange buzzing noise working its way into my happy little world. Wandering up past the bottom pond in search of the source of the noise, I became aware that something was amiss;

The bottom pond was empty!!!!

The buzzing was the pump pumping fresh air. Whaaah!

This discovery resulted in a brief outburst of a chorus of the Yorkshire swearing song interspersed with wails of "where's all the water gone?" as I danced up and down in panic! This was NOT a happy dance, I can tell you!

(For those who don't know it, the chorus goes "bugger, bugger, pig, sod, sh*t, sod, damn"!)

I searched around, but to no avail - I just couldn't find where the water had gone. The top pond was still full, nowhere seemed boggy or soggy ...... it had well and truly vanished! I went in search of Himself, Master of Mysteries, to see if he could shed any light onto things!

Himself, having a pessimistic outlook on life (- although he claims it's realistic) immediately decided that there must be a leak in the big top pond. I pointed out that as he hadn't dropped anything sharp into the pond ....had he?, that couldn't be the reason. (nice speedy deflection of potential blame there I thought!).

I don't normally leave the stream running during the week when I'm not around, but I'd forgotten to turn it off the previous Sunday and it had been running constantly for 5 days - so I had no idea how long the pond had been empty. Himself then added in a very satisfactory worry about whether or not the pump would be wrecked from running without water flowing through it. I reckoned that, as it's a German pump, it'd be fine!

We both spent a restless night trying to figure out what had happened. Himself was holding firm on his belief that we'd have to strip out the top pond to find a leak (see - told you he was a pessimist!), but I was convinced that there was another cause - ever the optimist and trying desperately to avoid emptying the top pond of its 5000 litres of water!

The following morning showed that the top pond water level hadn't changed : QED, no leak in there (phew!). Then I remembered Ower Dave!

When Ower Dave had come to help, I'd shouted at him for walking up the stream bed - something along the lines of "gerrof me stream yer gret daft wombat!" (Translation = "please come out of my stream you silly person!"). He'd claimed that dry stream beds were just paths by another name ... too much walking up Kinder Scout Downfall and Grindsbrook together when we were younger had obviously left its mark!

All of the top pond and most of the stream has solid support under the edges of the butyl lining. The only bit that hasn't is ......... the bit of the stream where the beach is! That's just got a thin aluminium strip under it to give it some rigidity.

I reckoned that Ower Dave had marched his great clod-hopping boots right over the stones and pushed down the liner and either bent it (hopefully) or ripped it on a sharp edge (please no!). So I shifted all the stones on his possible short-cut and, after a few minutes of serious breath-holding, found that he had indeed squashed the edge, but hadn't ripped the butyl - thankfully!

The lowered edge was then below the water level of the stream and meant that the constantly running water had been able to leach its way through the stones into the moss and soil and soak invisibly away - until there wasn't enough water left to create a flow.

Much relieved by my discovery, I then cleaned out the bottom pond. Yes, I know that technically it's still just a big hole with liner in it but in my imagination it's a finished pond!!!

This summer......! :)

Anyway, I spent considerable time removing water snails, frogs and other small aquatic beasties from the pond before cleaning all the gunk out of the bottom. Very smelly and not the pleasantest of tasks - and not aided by this frog who came back FOUR times after I'd carefully deposited him in the top pond - daft creature!

I gave up and kept him in this tub where I could keep an eye on him!

I then faced up to fixing the stream bed instead of procrastinating! I dug out the soil to give me a clear area to work, unfolded the butyl, rebuilt the edging using stones instead of the aluminium strip, refolded the butyl liner down over the stones then replaced the soil, holding the new edging securely in place. I set the stream running to check that I'd not missed any tiny tears - which I hadn't, and to prove to Himself that the pump was fine - which it was! German you know. Dead good!

Once I was happy with that, I started to replace the beach - putting in some bigger stones to support the edging should some plonk with big feet decided to walk up it again!

I left the stream running constantly for a couple of days to see if the levels dropped - which they didn't, before I put the finishing touches to the stream, adding the stones and pebbles to hide the liner and spill over onto the moss .......... you'd never know I'd been messing about with it would you?!

Stream running beautifully - even if the bit below the bridge still isn't finished!

Then Autumn came and all my hard work was covered up..........

What idiot wanted to build ponds under a load of trees eh?!

The pond and island yesterday -and, yes, the moss really is that green! A combination of all that snow and lots of rain has been very good for it this winter!

And a perfect way to end the day!

If at first you don't succeed, try again...and again...and again..and...!

When it came to building the stream, I have to confess to my usual level of naivety (some may say ignorance!) about how much work was involved, how long it would take, how we'd do the technical bits - you know, the usual sort of thing!

I hadn't sat down and worked out what I wanted either. I just had this plan/vision/idea (call it what you will) that the water would meander gently down a stream which was bordered by rocks and stones which were meant to represent valley or canyon walls.......I had NO concept of what the stream bed was made of or how we would deal with the changes in water levels given that I now wanted a shallow pool at the top in front of the waterfall, or anything vaguely helpful that would enable Himself to understand and interpret my vision! It wasn't a problem for me - I could SEE the perfect end result in my head. Getting there - phah!



Anyway, once Himself had got over yet another episode of sheer despair at my ineptitude and complete lack of interest in the nitty gritty (boring!) details, he began to try to draw the details out of me so that he had something to work on. The conversation was along the lines of:

Himself: What's the stream bed going to be made of?
Me: Err, dunno really, something flat?
Himself: (sigh) Where are we going to get something flat from?
Me: Err, dunno - have you got any ideas?
Himself: (sigh) How do you want to do the levels changes?
Me: (with lots of arm waving and gesticulations) Well I sort of thought of a couple of little waterfalls about 3 or 4 inches high each - you know, water gently trickling over the rocks, that sort of thing! Lots of pebbles and pea gravel on the stream bed to look pretty and interesting and natural, like it's always been there.....!
Himself: (sigh) Hmmm! How are you planning to do the sides of the stream?
Me: Err, hmmm, erm, well, sort of...you know..., stones and bolders....erm.... dunno really yet - but I know it'll be right when I've done it because I can see it in my head!!!!
Himself: SIGH!!!!
Does this man deserve a medal or what?!

Himself had the brilliant idea that we could aquire some flat slabs from around the garden .....I found some slabs making up a hideous crazy paving path down the east side of the house where we rarely go (probably because the path is so awful.....!). The slabs are sandstone and split easily, giving us large, but thin and relatively light pieces to work with. These were laid on a bed of sand and the 'correct' slabs identified for each bit of the stream. This involved trying lots of slabs in each position to work out which one was the nearest to perfect fit we could get for butting up to the waterfall stone coming out of the pond (that took several attempts to find, I can tell you!) which ones would become the stream waterfalls, which one looked right in which position, which ones would make the curves in the stream, etc,etc (yeah, I know - straight slabs, curved stream!!) - and then they were lifted up, had the sand readjusted, put back, lifted up, readjusted etc, several times - for each slab! Well they had to be level or the water would flow unevenly and disappear down one side and neither of us wanted that!

The top photo shows Himself (still slightly in despair mode) having identified the first slab for
the shallow pool and enjoying making the bridge and ensuring that it was perfectly level on the slab on the sand on the butyl on the fleece!!

The photo below shows the 1st attempt to line the bed and the sides of the stream and create the edge of the area for planting (can't call it a border or a rockery, so I'm stuck with calling it a bed - but that's not right either!)

The two photos below are the 1st attempt at creating my river valley - but the whole thing looked too 'forced' and un-natural. I wasn't happy with it at all - despite the fact that I had heaved hundreds of stones in and out of different position zillions of times, tried assorted permutations, balanced, twisted and turned rocks to get the 'right' shape and woke up on the Monday morning aching all over, even with bits of me I didn't know I'd got!

The water flowed smoothly over the slabs, but the sides were just SO wrong!

I was eventually happy, however, with the sides of the stream up at the top between the pond waterfall and the top bridge!

Both Himself and I spent ages trying to work out what was wrong with the river. I realised that the stones were all too sharp and regular, there were no water softened boulders. Himself, ever the sailor, realised that the river shouldn't all be regular - it needed a beach........!

So we made a beach at the point where a beach would be created naturally - that man is so clever!

The photo above shows the stream with an assortment of stones and baby boulders down one side and the beach on the island at the other. The green on the island is moss - from our moss mine, otherwise known as a lawn, down the garden! The soil area on the right is where a lot of topsoil from the ponds and streams was dumped. Here I had begun to dig it out and shift it (again!) to other parts of the garden. Why couldn't I have done that in the first place instead of ending up moving it about 3 times?!


The stream flowing. Oh yes!!!

Looking upstream past the island. the variety of boulders, rocks, stones, pebbles and pea gravel is more obvious in this picture - as is the reason why the first attempt didn't work! Ho hum!

The bottom pond will be FAR easier to build because we've learnt so much from building the top pond!

Yet more ways to get big rocks into a pond!

Having successfully completed the beach and retaining wall end of the pond, we finally turned our minds to the waterfall end - something Himself had been trying to block out (...or should that be 'avoid'?) for quite some time!

As the pond is supposed to look like it's full of rocks which have been carried downstream from Mount Fuji in the spring snowmelt (yeah, yeah - I know....... over-active imagination going at full pelt again!), we needed a couple of big rocks to sit one either side of the waterfall stone to look like the waterfall had been created by the rocks forcing the water through the narrow gap between them - are you still with me or has my imagination gone too far this time?!


Himself and Calamity (one of Last-Born's vast entourage of admirers!) built two scaffold towers, one either side of the waterfall, and used some of the strongest timbers from our random collection of 'bits' to make the support between the towers for the chain hoist to be fastened to, to allow us to hoist the rocks out over the edge of the pond and lowered down to reach the shelf.


I was still having to be careful because of problems with the scar tissue from my surgery, so I settled for making sure the pond liner on the shelf was nice and flat with no sharp edges on the folds.

Like when we put the other big rocks into the pond, I was only allowed one shot at choosing the right ones - so the pressure was on! Rocks were looked at from all angles, rotated, stood on end, discarded, reclaimed, discarded again...........until Himself bellowed "JUST CHOOSE!....... They're going to be mostly covered with water anyway!"

This did rather focus my mind somewhat and two were chosen. Himself and Calamity manhandled the stones to almost at the pond's edge.

Himself then chisled the bottom of the rock to make it slightly angled so that it would lean back a little bit against the pond wall. Luckily sandstone (our local stone) is fairly soft and breaks easily, so it was quite a quick job to knock the appropriate amount off.


We then used levers to lift the rock up enough to get small beams underneath, which would allow us easy access for the strops. I am standing on the pond shelf, so you can see that the finished water depth will be right up at the top of my wellies! Later 'paddling' to put smaller stones in place proved that there was about 1cm clearance - so I had to be very careful not to 'slosh' or I got very soggy feet! ( I wasn't careful enough though........ I leant forward to place a stone and got a wellie full of water. Yuk!)


The two cross members in place and the strop ready to go round the stone.


Himself begining to make the 4 way loop round the rock ready for hoisting.


Himself ready to guide the rock out from under the scaffold to over the shelf, then down into position. I am hauling on the chain to lift the rock and Calamity is catching the chain to prevent chain grease from getting on everything!

The two rocks in place - the waterfall stone was still covered up at this point. We'd put several layers of assorted 'stuff' over it to protect it from mishap. Having broken one waterfall stone already, we weren't about to let it happen again!

Rocks in place, waterfall stone uncovered, water level back up to the correct height (or wellie depth!). Oh happy day!