Why, isn't that just a loveliest little watering hole you ever did see? Wild asparagus to the north, ferns and bamboo to the south, and plenty water. Oh, and let's not forget the high voltage line submarining into the water. Not exactly the pond everyone has been envisioning. My new band, Mud Sweat and Tears, will be playing at your town soon.
Everything has been working out nicely, albeit slowly. Dirt comes out of the pond and goes on the waterfall hill just out of the photo on the left. Big rocks get stacked up around the western edges of the hill every so often (we really only want half of a hill) as a barrier wall. After a few courses of dirt I stomp and pound it with this thing I Jerry-rigged to compact the dirt. I'm taking lots of photos and someday will post an extended step-by-step article on the whole thing.
The 240vac line (still live) has been going deeper and deeper since it reached the middle of the pond. I haven't quite dug it out to the edge yet, but it is probably 3 feet down. The other end about six feet from the house ended up going into a black pipe leading into the house. Good, I don't have dig the whole house up. I started digging by the well head and so far, at three feet down, the line is in a large black pipe as well. Looks like a little construction site slight of hand to pass code.
The pond itself is a little over two feet deep with a couple of spots down to the magical three foot mark. Really, other than lugging a few more tons of dirt out, shaping the edges to look like something besides Pacman, and terracing the edges the digging part is getting pretty close to done.
I dug for a couple hours yesterday and then the clouds moved in and it has been raining ever since. Imagine our surprise to find the pond almost full this morning. Things will be a little muddy for a day or so after it's drained. The real bummer is that the heavy rains induced a mud slide on the hill and a section of the rock wall collapsed. Better now than when the hill is a couple feet taller I guess. I'm still working on a unified rock wall theory.
A really sharp eye might notice the huge boulder resting on the left side of the pond, which I'm happy to say only took a couple evenings of careful nylon strap positioning, hand winching and leveraging with boards to extract from the pond.
I think it will be fine right where it is at, don't you?
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