View the album: buildin’ it
“Ponds are the poetry of nature written in liquid lines.”
– Mehmet Murat Ildan
Long before you get pond poetry you have plastic. Not just any ole’ plastic. Good, high quality fish friendly plastic. I knew this was important. I have learned this lesson the hard way. I have done lots of things the wrong way. The toady mess pond was an experience in failure.
The toady mess pond wasn’t a total failure but what’s less than total success needs to be improved. I intended to make many improvements. I had promised the boss that this would be a better pond.
If you haven’t already looked at the album, this is a good time to see what it means to be buildin’ it. There is much effort between diggin’ it and fillin’ it and that is all summed up in buildin’ it.
Buildin’ the pond involves figuring out the insides and the outsides of the pond. Starting with the inside, I decided to go with a single, large pool. If you recall the spray paint outline on the lawn, it was the original plan to have a raised section in the middle. That didn’t happen quite as planned. It did morph into a different sort of middle island, an island of plants and fountains.
The pond is built on a decently sloping section of the lawn and so the house side of the pond is a bit more shallow from the far side of the pond. Overall the ground to bottom depth is roughly 30″. That is until you add the outside of the pond. The berm around the pond as at least a foot or several at the backside.
The berm was necessary for a couple reasons. The first is – what else am I going to do with all this inside dirt? A go cart track? I wonder…
Nope – no go carts in this household, yet. Maybe later with grandkids? We’d be following suit with my parents who had a track on their land, for you guessed it, grandkids. But for now, No!
Truly the inside dirt was the perfect medium to make the sides and backside of the pond. I envisioned a habitat of plants, rocks, birds, marmots… well no marmots unless we imported them. The habitat was important to the overall plan for the pond. I’ll talk more about this later. This quote sort of sums up the idea. I wanted this pond to tell a story every season.
“A pond is a silent storyteller, narrating the journey
of seasons in gentle waves.”
– Mehmet Murat Ildan
As you can see, the story being told in the pictures at this stage is, well, dirty. Dirt being moved into strategic positions. I needed to build a berm, a wall, several in fact, and a place for waterfalls. No Niagara falls, lets be realistic. No I wanted 3 Niagara’s! Turns out three it was. Three little ones. Three that are each different. I’ll figure out how to get the water to these later; for now, in this dirty stage I was just dreaming.
After the dirty work, it was time for the plastic. Turns out, not all plastic is the same. I had learned a lesson from the toady pond. The cheap, 4 mil black plastic you might use under your landscaping rock is really not suitable for fish. I learned this each year as the fish that grew and thrived in the summer all died in the winter. It was because plastic of this sort give off gases. Toxic gases that really became overwhelming when the pond froze over.
The pond freezing over was another area for improvement. That’s a topic for another day. We’ll revisit it soon. Back to the plastic. The pond liner as you can see in these pictures is large and black and thick and most importantly, fish friendly. This pond liner is actually two liners glued together. I’ll not go into this ordeal now, but trust me, if you can avoid it, do so. It all worked out in the end but it took an entire day just to get the liner ready.
Enough with the plastic already. The berm wall on the backside of the pond was an important aspect of the pond. I didn’t want the pond to be uniform (how boring) and in order to have the 3 Niagara waterfalls, it was essential to grow that berm up, up and away. The berm is roughly 3.5 feet tall with rocks stacked on top and finishes out around 4.5 ‘. Seemed high enough???, besides that, I ran out of dirt.
I guess no go-cart track after all.
The berm and the plastic were in place and as you guessed it, it was time for rocks. Big rocks, little rocks, all very round and smooth rocks. I had 15 ton of these little back breakers. This pile was no mystery to me. I previously had two similar piles of rocks in the months leading up to this. I moved every one of these three, 15 ton, piles by hand. For those who haven’t done the math, that’s 45 tons of cotton balls. The mass is correct, 45 tons, but the cotton balls is one of those distraction techniques you tell yourself when these little beauties roll down on your fingers and toes. Ouch, that’s gonna hurt. Nah, their just like cotton balls.
Another distraction technique to employ while moving 45 tons of rocks is to jam to the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s hits. Just get use to the monotony and embrace the prison camp labor. These rocks don’t move themselves. All good things come with a cost and at this stage of the game the cost is your knees, gloves, Advil and the Bee-gees, Staying Alive.
As you can probably surmise, this guy isn’t into heavy equipment to make the job any easier. I wanted to feel every shovel full of dirt and I wanted to touch every one of these rocks twice and some three and four times. But I’m smart so I wanted to touch them in the right order. I needed the big rocks first and then the little rocks later. I had learned from one of the previous 15 ton loads to have them put the rocks into the truck in a specific way. Believe me there is nothing worse than needing a big rock which is on the bottom of the pile. Been there, done that.
But not this time. I learn from my I mistakes and so I implored the rock yard….”please, please, please, put the big nightmares in first and put the little nightmares in last”. I really want to smash my fingers with the big rocks right off and I won’t be able to do that if I have to dig through the little rocks first. It worked beautifully! I was able to grab the big boulders right off my foot as they tumbled down the pile. I love when a plan comes together.
As you can see from the pictures, you ain’t done with the pond until you can put pumpkins around the front. You’ll no doubt gather, pumpkins indicate October and that is several months past August when this adventure began. You can also gather that the pond went from plastic and rocks to water, and lights and it happened just like that. Like a snap of the fingers.
Bing, bang, boom, it was magic. Not really, but like child birth, once all the pain is over there is only magic left. I am only guessing about the childbirth part as that is what I hear from those who have actually done it. It could be nothing like childbirth and for that ignorance I am eternally grateful. It takes real strength to do that sort of real labor and that shouldn’t be left up to men. I’m too big a sissy to go through all that.
Hope you come back for the next steps in this pond evolution. Next time we dive into testin’ it. From the pumpkins lining the pond you probably know what time of year it is…time for winter, ice, freezing and figuring out, “will this pump work through the winter”. This and other topics next time.
“Ponds teach us patience as they reveal the beauty
of life unfolding in their depths.“
-Anonymous
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