So here I go, keepin’ it real again by going for another record: the lowest-read post of my eight-year blogging career!
Ponds.
Yup, I’m building one.
Deep and wide enough to bury Amy Schumer twice, the plan was to create a natural-looking habitat for bees, bird, butterflies, fish, frogs and those cute little skinks our cats love to catch, torture and slowly kill.
To get my green tick of approval, I researched how to build a ‘mini bog’ filter that mimics the way nature cleans sediment out of running water in marsh environments. If it works, I’ll earn serious handyman-cred with the wife, who’s made it clear that this is MY project.
I’ll show you the mini bog later, because like everything in life it starts with a hole.
Note how I created stands for submersible pots at different levels? Gone. Removed because the irregular design made the pond liner hard to fit. In fact, ditch one pond liner ($129) and start again!
I decided all I wanted was a deep, clear, ovoid pool filled with rocks and plants and fish and frogs, with only one cut-in shelf. And a tree root I didn’t want to remove, just to give birds a perch and make sealing the liner a challenge.
Of course, using the tonne of soil / clay I excavated, I had the raw material to create a small mountain. Picture Richard Dreyfuss in his living room in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) pissing his wife off. That’s me!
I needed the mountain to disguise the mini bog pond filter and create a waterfall. Before I tore the first version apart, I actually got the mountain, pump, bog filter and waterfall working, and it was awesome!
Trust me!
But that was then, and now I’m back to this:
I’ve had cocktails that look less appetizing — there must be a thousand lilly pilly berries in that unlined hole, slowly turning the water a muddy pink. 600mm of rain in the last 29 days has been hard on us pending ponders, but at least I’m happy with the shape.
Also, it’s got the tick of pre-approval from the bowerbirds, lorikeets, turtledoves, wattlebirds and our others avian friends.
And it’s only going to get better, I promise! I hope.
I’ll rule a line here and end today’s progress update 29/03/2022.