July 25th may not seem like a long time ago. Two months from the end of July to the beginning of October is just a grain of sand on the beach of time. In the history of our pond though, it’s a much longer time period than we planned on for pond completion. And completion isn’t quite where we are at.
We have come a long way though from this starting point.
Time is what you need when you do the work yourself. I’m using the word ‘you’ rather freely, as the ‘you’ in this case was Mike, not me. You also save a lot of money, the ‘you’ in this case being Mike and me. You know how that one goes ‘What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine too’. At least that is how it works around here.
So was it a good idea? Let’s look at it this way – It was the only way we were ever going to get a pond. And a pond with a waterfall like ours would easily cost $10,000 if someone else did it. I’ll compile our actual costs at some point. For now it’s enough to say the savings were significant. Let’s make that Significant with a capital ‘S’. Ok, SIGNIFICANT in all caps, based on this sign we saw on a pond walk this summer.
The learning curve was also significant. An experienced pond builder could have done the work in just a few days. Knowing what to do and having a whole crew do it is way different than figuring it out yourself. They would have the right equipment too. We do have a landscape trailer, so that gave us the flexibility of getting our own rocks. Mike was able to select the rocks he wanted, and to shop around for the best price. That was good on the pocketbook. But it was one of the many time grabbers on the time/pond continuum. Somehow, this man who is willing to buy the first shirt that fits was highly selective when it came to picking rocks.
Yep, 2.5 tons of rocks into the trailer and out of the trailer. Worse yet, many of them had to get to the top of the waterfall, and not one rock climbed up there itself. Fortunately, he can drive up relatively close to the pond, so that helped. We also did some rock shopping in our own back yard. We’ve been collecting for years.
We did meet one of Mike’s big goals – to get the fish in the pond before mid-September. Technically, they went in on the 14th, well before mid-September in his book. It was a whole new world for them, and they spent most of the first weeks hiding. Now they are swimming around freely and sending us big thank yous.
We even rejoined the Midwest Pond and Koi Society (MPKS). They just happened to have me out to speak on Low Maintenance Gardening exactly when we were thinking it was time to get back in the group. We belonged several years ago when we wanted to learn what was involved in having a pond. If you are thinking of building a pond, do your research!
Research includes going on Pond Tours. We’ve done some in the past with MPKS and Aquascape. If there is one thing you quickly learn, it’s that whatever size pond you were building, it isn’t big enough. We did have someone else dig the pond. Then we went on a pond tour. Mike came home and quickly moved the already placed liner to make ours bigger. Ours won’t look like this, but tours do quickly create pond envy.
Where do we go from here? Well, now it’s time for me to pretty-it-up. The first plant is in. I even followed my mantra of ‘no drifts of one’. I was only successful in finding two of the Winston Churchill Aster I liked, so two it is.
Many more plants will follow, as we potted up a lot of plants when the patio and pond were being dug this spring. Like the fish, it is time for the plants to go in before mid-September. Too late! They will go in by mid-October. That is not too late. In the time/pond continuum, autumn is a great time for planting, and plant I will.
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