Posts Tagged ‘landscape pond’
Making Changes
On Sunday, in our 4th spring on this property, I took on the annual re-installation of the pump and filter in our landscape pond. For the first time in all those years, I went so far as to re-engineer the tubing that had been left by the previous owners, which is what I had used all the other times. Even though I knew little about it, I always felt there was room for improvement.
Initially, the pond was just one more thing on top of a multitude of issues with which I had little experience. Slowly, year by year, I began to gain confidence as I grew more familiar with the minutia of tending to our animals, acres, machines, and nature.
For the past 3 years, I simply connected a pump to the existing hose and filter and turned it on. The year we moved in, I left the filter sit, with water still in it, all winter long, not even knowing what it really was. The second year, I opened it up and figured out the charcoal media deserved to be replaced.
Sunday, I was smart enough to pull the filter out of the garage where it had been stored all winter —clean and dry— and assembled it on level ground, before connecting to the hoses below the pond and filling it with water. Got it sealed on the first try, which never happened any of the other years of putting it together inline.
Setting Stones
With the extra tubing removed, I wanted to rearrange the rocks on the back side of the pond to accommodate a shorter route from pump to waterfall, and then cover it from view. There is an aspect of this creating that goes against my natural inclination to leave things the way they are.
To build up the rocks enough to cover my latest setup, I needed to go find them from other locations, and something about doing that feels to me like breaking eggs to make an omelet. I initially found myself hesitant about removing rocks from existing locations and leaving holes in the stony landscape bordering our house.
However, after 4 years, I am getting better at seeing how quickly the landscape scenery adapts to our alterations. It will only seem like a hole for a short while. I might know it, but others walking past probably won’t notice the difference.
I’m about halfway done toward achieving what I hope to create. The plumbing appears to be all in working order, so that just leaves a few more stones to turn before I’ll be ready to cross this off the project list.
Not that the list will notice the difference of having one less thing on it.
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Water Falling
I got the pump installed in our pond yesterday. It took me a while to get the pump to run because the garage outlets were all dead. I was stumped at first, because the circuit breaker in the basement was on and appeared normal. Eventually, I remembered there is a ground-fault interrupt outlet behind one of our shelves. Resetting that did the trick.
It was a wild morning, because Cyndie came back in the door shortly after leaving for work, and reported she had a flat tire. She switched and took the truck to work, because I had already scheduled an appointment to get the oil changed in my car.
Our local auto repair shop is great. When I stepped up to pay for the service to my car, he suggested I go get Cyndie’s car and come right back so they could fix the tire. I could pay for mine when I returned.
I put air in her tire so I could drive it and got it to the shop without any complications. They found the leak and plugged it without charging a penny.
In the afternoon, I did some more mowing, because the grass is really starting to take off and grow. The back yard almost looks to be in mid-summer form. It’s the trees that reveal we are still more spring than summer around here right now.
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As Planned
photo by Elysa Hays
With rain threatening for most of the morning, we stuck to our plan and started the day focusing on the landscape pond. We rearranged a lot of rocks, placed the pump, built a waterfall, and then stacked stones around the plastic tubes to make them less conspicuous.
Cyndie had purchased supplies to help keep the water clear, and set about tending to that. Elysa served as my consultant, giving me feedback on how my placement of stones looked from afar. Elysa also took a turn at capturing photos, and pruning dead growth from the few perennials growing out of the water.
Since we are experiencing problematic wetness around the property this spring, it feels nice to finally embrace water for once, as opposed to frowning over it, longing to see it gone. Cyndie wrapped the water line and power cord from the pump with some vine leaves, and after topping off the overall level with a bit of fresh water from the hose, we declared the pond complete and ready for the season.
We are lucky to have had the help of Elysa and Anne all weekend on the variety of things we chose to do. We didn’t make it to the work weekend up at the lake place, but having them here made it feel like a special weekend, and their efforts provided great gains and priceless company on the first Memorial “work-weekend” at Wintervale.
Relative Something 