House Project: Pond Work (part iii)
Leading up to our trip to Alaska, we (mostly Steven) did a lot of work to the pond area. We removed all the brush and raked out the old leaves. Steven and a friend dug the hole for the fountain equipment and started digging the trench toward the pond for the piping.
Then we were gone for a week.
And when we came back the stumps we had cut down had new leaves growing off of them. There was new growth in the area we cleared up too. In a week’s time! Nuts!
Even more nuts though? Was how much the level of the pond went down while we were gone. Here is a panoramic from May 20:
And June 3:
And here is one I took this morning:
Do you feel like you can barely see the pond? And all you can see is mud? (Did you find the three ducks in the photo?) It’s not just my horrible photo taking skills – the water has gone down that much. I’ll outline the perimeter of the pond in red for ya:
We’ve haven’t had much rain this summer, and nothing feeds in to our pond so the water is slowly evaporating. We kind of feel like we might go out there one day and it will just be a giant mud pit. Yay…
The muddy area in this photo was all covered in water when we moved in.
But we (Steven) are still working at it. Steven cleared a bunch of brush around the edge of the pond on Independence Day, so that now, while the water is low, you can walk around it. And we’re still discussing putting a fountain in, because even though it’s low, we’d like the water to circulate so we have a few less mosquitoes in the yard.
Can’t go outside without these guys showing up (from L to R: Bill, Bob and Freddie)! They thought I was coming to feed them when I went outside this am to take photos. So of course, I went and got them some seed.
Themocracy
Those ducks have got you trained!!
I can’t believe how much smaller the pond got! Less space for the ducks to float around in…
Yeah! Luckily, they are still coming to visit!
At least its an opportunity to work on it without waders on!! It’ll be extra pretty when it fills back up.
Yeah! Steven went out in the water with the waders and it was only up 2′ – it was about 4’+ before!
Right after we left your place, we were talking to our friends about what constitutes a pond vs. a lake. Apparently the answer is not really that clear-cut, but I always thought a pond was a body of water like yours–with no external source like a stream or river, so ponds are more likely to dry up. I guess it freezes in the winter since it’s not that deep. I hope you can get the fountain set up soon to avoid mosquitoes.
Ahh, I should look in to this more and make sure I am calling it the right thing (the right thing is probably puddle. HA!).
I hope we can still set it up, too! Although so far, while the mosquitoes are bad, they still don’t seem as bad as when we visited the house in August last year!