The Pond

The first winter Hubby worked at Walmart, I seemed to spend huge amounts of time there, looking over their stock and waiting for him to finish work. I spent most of my time in their garden department. Inexpensive things that so make a living space better. Of course, as with everything, you get what you pay for. Buyer beware.

So come February, they have this 100 gallon pond kit on sale. For a relatively small amount of money, we too could have a serene place to sit and watch the water flow. Well, kidlet and I were hooked and we somehow managed (in the rain) to get the thing home in our small Saturn car. Being we were broke, we decided to install the thing ourselves. Months of digging the hole, reworking our drains and sprinklers, finding we had a tree that had worked it's way into our drains and thus had to dig up the entire line, to fix it. Well, there we were in May just about ready to get electrical brought over and it does the unthinkable in May...it rains and rains. Totally fills the hole (no pond at this point). So I had to bail the thing out. Well, you get the idea, it was a challenging project and I am sure that Hubby was ready to trade me in for a different model, by it's end. :-)

Finally, come the summer, we finished it. It looked great...well as great as a cheap pond can look. It does indeed give our backyard a totally different serene feel and I do love it. So I guess all's well in the end.

For any thinking hey, that sounds like a great idea, a few words of warning. Get mosquito fish. That gives you something to look at and keeps your water mosquito free. They are free (at least in California) from Vector Control. I have an underwater plant to keep the water filled with air, for the fish to breathe. So that even when we go off on vacation, the pond has air in the water. Algae is a constant issue here and it changes as the seasons change. Winter is clingy algae and summer is long stringy algae. I get worms, snails, weird white bugs at the bottom and goo. It all needs to be cleaned weekly, including the intake for the pump. When the water is warm and my hand is grabbing stuff...sometimes the fish come over and perform a ballet around my arm...it doesn't get any better.