Looks like I haven't posted an update on our pond for a couple of months now. Probably because it became a huge slog, and I was more done with the whole situation than I've been with any DIY project ever. Still, those memories are fading a bit now.
So, here it is. The pond plants and bog garden plants are all growing in really nicely. After a bit of a wobble, the first two waterlily leaves are now floating on the surface (top right of pond), and there are even three goldfish in there, along with some pond snails. Still no frogs found their way in, which has surprised me, but fingers crossed they may sometime soon. We've done some planting around the earth banks I piled up around the wooden frame, and the mud is starting to disappear. Am so excited to see it all fully grown in though, should look great.
If you're wondering what the new wooden straight thing is on the right there, it's an oak water channel I made from left over pond structure wood, which ends in a small waterfall into the pond. This is on one side of a bridge we've put in, which a stream runs underneath. Below is a photo of the stream in its somewhat glory. It's hand dug and hand made, a strip of pond liner in a shallow trench, which I then covered with mortar style concrete (sand and cement) by hand, then painted with clear epoxy resin. Only the resin didn't dry clear, it dried white. FML. We're going to leave it for a few months to see if algae growing on it and plants growing over it fixes that isssue, but it was hugely annoying. The resin even specifically said it could be used on wet or recently dried concrete. Anyhoo.
The other slight annoyance with it was that, inspired by
friedaweed's genius two sink setup on this thread, I dug a hole, put a huge pot in it and filled it with gravel to make a massive gravel filter for the pond. Basically the pump in the pond pumps water up a buried tube to the top of the stream, then it was to run up through the gravel filter, containing many bog garden plants, then drain down into the stream. Only I messed up a flow rate somewhere and the water just spilled over the top and over the surrounding garden. Eventually I took the hit, emptied all the bags of gravel out of it and put a proper pressure based pond filter in the big hole. This has worked great, and the pond is looking really clear too. Still though, it's part of why I reached rock bottom with this whole arsing affair. The filter is now under an acer in a barrell, which makes it hard to access and clean, but that's a problem for future me to deal with.
Here's the whole setup then, stream, bridge and pond behind it. Our girls love it up there, we're up there every evening now, and they can play poo sticks with the stream and the bridge. So all worthwhile, and will only get better and better as more and more things grow in. Definitely my last DIY project for a while though...
