We set to work on the waterfall

… with expanding foam and silicone. It’s a bit tricky and takes some experimenting and rearranging to get the flow just right. It’s worth taking your time.

Ready for a trial run tomorrow.

It rained hard last night

… and our emerging pond is filling up a little precipitously.

The first tennant is already looking at apartments

… even though the builders haven’t left the building yet and there’s no running water.

So we’d better finish this thing fast. Housing seems to be at a premium. I hope this fellow takes care of mosquitoes in lieu of rent.

All rocked

We cleverly hid a sturdy 3-way PVC pipe connector under the rocks to give our fish some escape route from potential predators (they love their hidey-hole).

Rocking the pond

We squared our shoulders, put a couple of bottles in the fridge and did some heavy lifting.

Slates for the waterfall and edge:

Adding the gravel:

(You can see how you might want to invite some friends and neighbors for the digging and rock-hauling part. Try to entice them with the promise of a pond party later, or maybe some help with the building of their own pond.)

The quest continues

Underlayment and liner are in.

3 tons of rocks and gravel waiting in the driveway

We dug the hole for the skimmer

But we weren’t done digging just yet. The skimmer still needed an overflow trench (not quite finished here and later filled with gravel – Remember to guide the overflow AWAY! from your foundations) and the feeder hose for the filter from which the waterfall would start (the thin line running between the pond edge and the tomato plants behind it):

It rained during the night

As you can see, the clay is quite watertight. So now, we have to drain out the water to continue building the pond. Oh, the irony…

Trying to keep a natural look and different heights for plants

The third shelf and the skimmer hole are almost done. The pond depth is now at its final 2 feet. Which mean that the digging is almost at an end. Woohoo!

Actually we dug the deepest part down to a little over two feet, since it would be partly filled back up with gravel, and two feet is the sweet spot between giving your fish a survival chance and needing a pool permit from the city.

It begins

The lilies have been temporary relocated underneath the lilac. The pond is now roughly 5 feet by 8 feet, and the first shelf (8″ deep) has been excavated. Also, the honeymoon’s over: after an easy digging in soil and sand, we hit clay. Hard, compact, stone-encrusted clay.

At the end of the day the second shelf (roughly 16 inches deep) was also done. At the back, we hit a pocket of clay with small mussel-like shells. Could be old denizens of the Stony Swamp, or perhaps fossils of the St-Lawrence sea. Either way, it brings an aura of archaeological mystery to the digging. A clammy aura, maybe, but an aura still.