Building the waterfall and stream .......at last!

I'm bone tired, I've got mysterious bruises all over my legs, my hands don't want to work properly and my get-up-and-go has completely scarpered. It must be Monday morning!

Why do I never learn? Why don't I stop shifting soil, moving rocks or whatever half an hour before exhaustion sets in, rather than just after?!Why do I continue to delude myself that I have the fitness and energy levels of a 22 year old when every Monday my body tells me otherwise?!

ANYWAY! Enough of feeling sorry for myself - it was totally self-inflicted and does not deserve sympathy, SO, back to last summer.......waterfall and stream building, yeah! The summer of '08 was not the best British summer we've ever had! It tipped it down a lot of the time - but there were some good days and we grabbed them with both hands.

Before the waterfall stone could be put in place I had to dig out the stream route so that Himself could see the angle the stone needed to be set at in the pond side. My red sweatshirt is on the main island stone. The stream will curve round behind the island before curving back towards the right to flow down to the bottom pond.



Himself was allowed to build ONE straight wall in the pond - which was to be under the waterfall stone and, therefore, completely hidden!

The water in the pond was held back by one of our chunky wooden beams which was long enough to reach right across the pond and to have the butyl liner and fleece liner draped back over it. The light grey fabric is the fleece liner. It was all kept in place by a couple of random bits of stone carefully plonked on top!



Himself had replaced the original waterfall stone after it had broken in two after being accidentaly dropped when being moved. The photo below shows the original stone, with its nice curved shape - but, apparently, it was a pig to place and get level........ Hmm, was the breakage really an accident?!!



There are no photos of Himself laying the new waterfall stone as I was off doing something else at the time, so wasn't around to take photos!

Once the stone was levelled to Himself's wonderfully perfectionist standards and satisfaction, it had to be tested to check that the water would flow evenly over all its width. Himself and the ever magnificent Pete roughly laid both liners down the stream bed and into the bottom pond, which was then filled by hosepipe until there was enough water to be pumped up to the fill the top pond whilst still leaving a decent level in the bottom pond. (You can tell from the description who worked out all the technical details like flow rate etc - and it wasn't me!)



The new posh German pump was turned on and we stood with baited breath as the top pond water level slowly rose and began to trickle smoothly and SO evenly over the waterfall and into the stream bed. Shouts of joy (me!) and amazement (Himself!) could be heard across Chesterfield.
Pete just laughed at us!



The water looks brackish because it had been sitting in the pond for several weeks with no filter system and there is reflected light from all the trees that surround it, but it wasn't quite as bad as it looks in the photo - honest!

The water then burbled, gurgled and flowed its way merrily down the proto-stream until it finally fell into the bottom pond for the very first time. I was well giddy by this point and nearly toppled into the bottom pond in my excitement!



Another excellent weekend's work!

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!

Life's a beach!

How sad am I? - I have so been looking for a way to use that title!
Anyway, on with the saga of the pond and the beach:

Himself, having studied the land behind the pond in a worried fashion for several days, decided that if we didn't do anything all the soil from the fruit cage was going to leap forward about a yard and end up in the pond! So he decreed that we needed a BIG retaining stone to prevent this from happening. In my usual fashion I moaned and groaned and said that the soil wouldn't go anywhere (mainly because I wanted to play at making the beach at this point, rather than shift more big rocks!). Himself quite rightly ignored me and started to clear back the soil near the pond and flatten the base to take a retaining wall of a rock.

Himself moving the topsoil in preparation for the rock.

Having realised that resistance was futile, I then opted to help. Having cleared the area and identified an appropriate (for that read very big and heavy) rock, we loaded it onto the flintstones trolley on the yard and hauled it up the garden- jolly hard work for just two of us!

As there was a steepish slope down to where we wanted it and we were using a scaffold tower with feet all at the same level, we had to securely prop up the pond-side legs. We did this by building two little mortar-free towers out of spare bricks topped off with a couple of bits of paving slab we had hanging around.

As we weren't sure how well this technique would work or how we'd position the rock, we protected the liners by folding them over another beam which straddled the pond.

Himself moving a wacking great beam of wood onto the now secure scaffold tower. The beam will support the chain hoist to lift the rock up - which is waiting patiently on the trolley!

The next step was to build a track for the trolley to trundle on. It definately trundled rather than rolled - mainly becasue the wheels were tree trunk shaped rather than round! The trolley was then shoved carefully along the track until it was under the chain hoist.

You can see in this photo how far back the butyl liner goes under the pebbles. Once all the stones are in place on the shelf the water level will be raised again, so the liner has to be high enough to prevent seepage. We used the same method of the plastic coated corrugated sheeting to provide stable edging - and the butyl went up and over the top of the sheeting and is held in place by backfilled soil.

Trolley and rock in place under the chain hoist.

Then the trolley had to be removed!

Oh, we got SO good with levers when shifting these rocks that we could have positioned them on a sixpence!

He's not levering on his own - he's just adjusting the position of the trolley!

Himself levered the rock up, I slid the strops underneath, he lowered the rock back down, then we fastened the strop to the chain hoist, hauled the rock up and removed the trolley.
Strops in place, rock ready to be raised.

THis is the rock securely held up by the chain hoist whilst Himself moves the trolley and the track.

The rock was then lowered down onto the pond ledge which had had a layer of sand put on it first. The rock was swiveled around until the best position was found and lowered gently into place.

The position was marked and the rock was hoisted up again to allow the fleece liner and the butyl top liner to be laid underneath it - I have to confess that my heart was in my mouth as I put the liners in place with half a tonne of rock above my hands! The photo above shows Himself smoothing sand marked by the rock as we swiveled it into place.

Once the main retaining rock was in place we could position the smaller stones - I tried quite a few (okay - lots!) before finding the correct combination of shapes and sizes that looked right together as well as appearing natural in their positionings. Himself sorted out and tidied up the excess liner ,which will not be visible once the tea house is completed.

The big rock (on the right of the photo) looks far less impressive here because I'd backfilled the area with the topsoil we'd removed earlier. All the stones had fleece liner offcuts underneath to prevent damage to the butyl.

This is looking down on the mostly completed beach from the path. The triangular gap between the three stones is a planting gap.

The completed beach with some planting in place.

Not a bad afternoon's work really!

Rock related injuries and the first stones moved into the pond!

Once we'd got the island stones in place things ground to a halt in the Japanese Garden - this was partly because it was Winter (the last stone was planted the weekend before Christmas 2007) and partly because putting the stone in caused me a bit of a problem.

For years I'd had a very small umbilical hernia - but it had never caused me any pain, even when pregnant. However, carting loads of rocks about and heaving the flintstones trolley up the garden had taken its toll and caused the hernia to enlarge slightly - but still not be a problem as I'd always stopped carrying stuff as soon as I'd become aware that it was begining to pull or ache.

True to form, the weekend before Christmas, I'd reverted to managerial duties (bossing everyone else about!) once I'd started to ache. I was directing operations about manouvering the big stone when it began to wobble - I was nearest, so jumped forward to push it back into a stable position before it fell.

Foolish or what?!

The resulting increase in the size of the hernia and the discomfort (okay, pain!) I was in meant that surgery was the only option, so February 2008 saw me ready to go under the knife. The surgery was a success .... unfortunately the recovery was less good as my body didn't like being messed about with and bits of me ground to a halt, resulting in the copious use of enemas and cathetars - not a time I like to dwell on too much really!

It took almost 5 months before I was anything like back to normal, although I was allowed light gardening duties before then - but the scar tissue I'd been left with mean that bending over or doing anything that squashed my insides was a bit of a n0-no for a while. Not good and I became increasingly frustrated by it all as I am not famed for my patience!

It also meant that Himself had to do most of the heavy work all last year and I still have to be careful about what I can and can't lug about.

Anyway, once I was sufficiently recovered, we decided to start getting some of the big stones onto the shelf around one side of the pond because I couldn't plant any pond plants until that was done - and I was just itching to get started on that as it would make it begin to look like a 'real' pond at last!

I'd decided that I wanted the pond to look as natural as it could be, so I imagined that a stream came down the mountain (?) into the garden and entered the pond from roughly where the right hand corner of the fruit cage is. In spring, this stream would carry the snow melt (yeah, yeah, I know - I've got a vivid imagination and I'm on the top of a hill in a town in the UK, but bear with me on this one...!) and rocks, stones, pebbles etc,` which would end up all mixed up together in a tumble of 'stuff', some of which would form a pebble beach, some would tumble a bit further - I'd got used to being laughed at for my fanciful ideas by this point, so was going to carry on regardless of my sceptics!

I decided that I needed a large stone to 'catch' the pebbles and form the beach so, having chosen the appropriate one - and I was told in no uncertain terms by Himself that I could only have ONE shot at this, so I had to choose the right stone first time (aagh, the pressure, the pressure....!), Himself then used the scaffold tower and chain pulley to lift the chosen stone up from where it had lain for about a year, levered the stone onto the flintstones trolley, dismantled the tower, pushed the trolley to the correct bit of the pond and rebuilt the tower over the trolley in the new position. I was still not allowed to pull/push heavy stuff, so I watched from the sidelines whilst making admiring and supportive noises and providing drinks!

Proof of drinks provision - some days there were chocolate biscuits too!

Ooops, I've just realised that some of the plants that were under the kitchen window last summer when this photo was taken are still there! Oh well, they've survived ...and they'll get planted this year! (hopefully)

Having got everything positioned, Himself filled a donkey (a huge bag with handles at the four corners, used for carrying heavy loads for the building industry) with some of our sandstone rubble to use as a counterweight - because the stone had to be lifted up and out beyond the far side of the tower to get over the shelf.

The counterweight wasn't heavy enough and the scaffold nearly toppled into the pond, so extra weight was added - by me. I was that counterweight!

I have to say that it is probably one of the most uncomfortable jobs I've had to do in a long line of uncomfortable jobs! I had some very sharp bits of stone sticking in some very soft places!

The stone in place on the shelf.

All the stones that were placed on the pond shelf had a layer of fleece liner underneath them to prevent any damage to the butyl liner and so avoid leaks. Himself's idea - I wouldn't have thought of that!

The first layer of pebbles on the beach.

I got ridiculously excited about putting this stone in place and playing with, sorry - placing the pebbles as it finally felt like we were getting somewhere - probably because it was such visible progress, whereas a lot of what we'd done in the digging, soil moving, leveling etc was 'hidden'.

It was a good day!

More stone shifting - and a little bit of parental pride!

It's been a very busy couple of weeks - hence the large gaps between posts.

I just want to share a bit of parental pride before I do the gardening bit - so please indulge me for a few paragraphs!

My younger daughter, Last-Born, has recently taken part in a school production of High School Musical. She had the lead role of Gabriella Montez - and was FANTASTIC! And it's not just me that thinks so in my doting-motherly way, the local press thought so too!

I've included the article from the paper - I hope you can read it okay! Apparently if you click on it, it will enlarge so that you can read it properly, or so Last-Born tells me!

I am SO proud of her! I did do some acting way back in my youth, but I don't do singing as I have the musical abilities of a dead slug! It obviously skipped a generation and went straight from my dad to Last-Born. (and First-Born. She is equally musical and plays a variety of instruments). I am so in awe of Last-Born's singing skills as I have to settle for enthusiasm rather than accuracey!

Suprisingly enough, Last-Born wants to be in (star in!) a West End production when she's a bit older. She certainly has the ability.....!

Right, back to reality - and the Japanese Garden! It took several attempts and a variety of different stones before I found the 'right' stones for the island. The first big stone we put in place looked right when it was lying down on the yard, but when we stood it vertically in the hole on the island it was just so wrong that it was obviously meant to be a horizontal stone ...... so it had to come out. Himself was not overly impressed with me at that point!

Once we found the right stone and started to get the other 4 in place as well, Himself did begin to understand what I meant about some stones being vertical and some being horizontal - having initially thought that I'd completely lost my marbles ( or should that be pebbles?)!!!

Here are the island stones finally in place - much to the relief of Himself!

You can also see the centre stone for the Tai Chi circle just resting roughly in place and the soil now mounded up around the circle. When it's finished, the centre stone will sit in the circle level with the tops of the bricks - but I wanted to see what it would look like!

The Tai Chi circle from the north (top) side, with the island stones, the dug out stream bed coming down the far side of the island to go under the bridge to the bottom pond and the gravel/ hardcore motorway, sorry - path, waiting for its top layer of sand. Ignore the sticks - I obviously hadn't cleared up properly!

Ceefer cat was inspecting the bamboo - again!

Paths, Islands and Tai Chi circles!

So ....... we're still in the summer of 2007 and progressing with the paths. The technique involved digging a big path-route ditch, moving the soil to a spot that I just know I'll need to shift it from again in about 2 months time (but there's nowhere else to put it as all the previously clear ground is now full of stones of assorted sizes!), moving the sandstone bedrock large-ish pieces from where I put that about about 2 months ago (because there was nowhere else to put it ... etc, etc) and dumping them into the path ditch, roughly leveling them out then covering the large-ish pieces with a deep layer of smaller pieces followed by a layer of tiny pieces, then jumping up and down on the lot to bed them all down. It was all topped off with a layer of sand which had been sieved through our giant sieve earlier in the day.

Once I'm quite happy with all this work, Himself comes along and says we need to be sure that we've backfilled properly between the path and the soil. My response at this point is "*#~#*#**~~~*"!!! - which roughly translates as "do it yourself - please"!


So Himself and our dear friend Pete did!
The backfilling involved some complicated manouveres with all our spades and shovels. They were put in behind the bedrock pieces and then gently levered so that there was a gap (where there wasn't one before!) between the path and the soil, which then had extra soil put down it and heeled in firmly. This was repeated along the full lengths of both sides of all the paths.
I am firmly convinced that Himself had delusions of grandeur at this point and thought he was actually building a motorway rather than a little path!

Pete has been a star in the garden too - he regularly comes to stay for the weekend, works very hard both days, then goes home again! He's also helped Himself with the technical side of planning the Tea House and will be involved in the building of it too. He is one of my oldest (in that we've known each other sine I was 15!) and dearest friends - and I'm going to do his garden when we've finished this!


Himself and Pete working on the bottom path.

How to build a Tai Chi training circle:
First demolish an old cold frame that was home for some very happy slugs and snails who had been continually eating all my salad seedlings.
Clean up all the old bricks then lug them across to the other side of the garden four at a time because Himself is using the barrow for something else.
Fail to find any clear area to put them, so dump them on the path thus creating a major Health and Safety issue as they are now in everyone's way.
Realise that where you want to put said circle is not flat - nowhere near flat, not even vaguely level!
Panic!
Call for Himself and Pete for advice, safe in the knowledge that they won't be able to resist the challenge of sorting it out.
Watch admiringly as they work out levels, heights and any other mathematical things they can think of.
Go dig a bit more path whilst they sort it out!


Nice level area dug into the slope, with the first layer of bricks being put into place. The plank balancing on the post is the height of the top layer of bricks.

The circle is one metre in diameter. I quite fancied using an old millstone as there are plenty available locally and the top would have been nice and smooth to train on, but they were all only 90cms in diameter and that was just that wee bit too small for comfort!


Second layer.
Each layer of bricks also had the central area filled with bricks and brick bits before having sand firmly pushed down all the gaps.


Looking from the path to the top layer of the circle, now with gravel added.
At some point this spring, the circle will be taken apart again so that we can mix cement powder with the sand - Himself is worried that, despite all the earth banked up round it, the circle will shift whilst I'm training - I'm not QUITE sure what he thinks I'm going to be doing on there!!!

The circle overlooks the bottom bridge and the bottom pond. The gap between the circle and the path with be packed with soil which will gently slope up to the circle and, eventually, have a top layer of moss to cover it. There will be no plants on this area as I am likely to kick them as I train!




We then realised that we hadn't laid the power cable across to where I want a granite lantern - we got REALLY good at undoing things to put in a bit we'd missed out!
This is Himself mid cable run.


One Tai Chi circle almost complete! There is a small stone circle to go in the middle, level with the bricks, but this won't be put on until the cementing stage.
The sand covered top path is visible beyond the circle, then peters out to stones by the circle. The path the skirts the circle where the spade is before turning right to cross the bridge.


Ceefer cat doing quality control on the partially dug out bottom pond!



How to manouver big rocks:
Borrow several big strong blokes!

Having used the flintstones trolley to get the rocks up the garden in the first place, we had to resort to man power (plus a bit of girlie power!) to get them to where I wanted them and put them into place - and, often, to dig them up and take them out again because they just weren't QUITE right there after all! (sorry lads!)

Himself, Owen and Chris working on the island stones. The horizontal stone had to be moved into a slightly different position twice because they put it where they thought it should go rather than where I'd said I wanted it!

Himself and our assistants got very good at using levers to shift the stones around - they also learnt to keep their toes well out of the way!

The large rock lying horizontally on the left of the photo was my first choice for the biggest island stone - but once it was in place and upright it just looked WRONG. I couldn't explain why it was wrong, it just was. So, bless 'em, they took it out again and put another one in instead - and I had chosen the right one that time!

Some rocks were right first time, but it was often a case of trial and error - not a problem with the little rocks, but hard work on the big ones!

Right ....where had I got to? Oh yes, path building!

In order to explain the next bit, I've had to go back in time to two springs ago - to 2007 - before we'd really got very far on digging out the top pond. The work on the garden was not done in any logical order (suprise, suprise!), it was done in my order and often depended on what I felt like doing and how bored (or aching) I was with working on a particular bit - but mostly to try to get some shape and structure in place so that everyone else could begin to understand my still apparently unfathomable design plan!

This is looking north up the garden. The bottom pond, where the spade is sticking up, has been partially dug out by one of Last-Born's friends (thanks Luke!) and stayed like that for about a year, but at least it showed where the pond was. Himself is digging away in the top pond.

The paths form a sort of wiggly Y shape with a right-handed curve coming off the bottom of the Y. The bottom path forms the curve at the bottom of the Y. The path enters the garden at the right hand edge of this photo behind the bamboos. It then crosses the as yet to be dug stream which is marked out by the (just visible) hosepipe and curves round to go between the circle of stones (that currently looks like a mini Stonehenge but is, in fact, going to be my tai chi training circle) and the pile of soil that will become the island of rocks. It then seperates roughly where the green trug is. One path goes to the right of the top pond up towards the piles of tree trunk slices (long story!), which is where the tea house will eventually be, and the other path goes to the left towards the pink trug and wheelbarrow to meet up with the hideous crazy paving path, which forms the top route into the garden.

The left-hand path meets the current path immediately below where the grass begins, just to the left of the barrow. The right-hand path will have to wait until I've redistributed the mountains of soil at the right-hand side of the photo! (approximately a year!!)

Himself working on the pond, whilst I dig the footings for the path.

It's quite deep for a footpath (a minor bone of contention as it was Himself's idea, but I had to dig it...!) but we desperately needed to :

a) gain more topsoil to get the levels right and

b) get rid of all the sandstone rubble we'd accumulated from digging up bedrock! and

c) it kept Himself very happy that we had remained cost and waste neutral so far!

More path footings. That year, work was also dictated by where the shade was! I'm in the shade from our cooking apple tree. we couldn't work on the pond beyond about 2.30pm as it was just too hot in the direct sunlight.

The footings were varying depths depending on the levels we needed around different parts of the garden. The two wooden posts are levels markers and the clear pipe is filled with water and was our giant spirit level.

For all I tease Himself, I could not have done this project without his mathamatical wizardry and attention to detail. I would not have known where to start to work out what the levels needed to be, let alone known how to do them - so, for all of that, and way, way more (including working blind because you still didn't really understand what I was up to!), I thank you from the bottom of my heart and pond my love!

Yes, we have a bridge!

This is the bottom bridge, below the island. The path has been roughly dug out and comes in at the top right of the photo beyond the pink trug. It'll meet the bridge, then come off this side at a slight angle so that it can come closer to the tai chi circle, where it will stay a constant distance from the circle but match the curve of the perimeter until it is at the point where it can split.

Looking up over the bottom pond to see the stream route. It goes under the bridge (obviously!) then curves to the right before looping left round the back of the island. Poor old Himself so desperately wanted nice clean, straight lines everywhere and I insisted on curves - guess which are easier to do!!