Gentle reader, May 2, 2017
It has been a while since I have written. I just retired from my job of 35 years and it is taking some getting used to. I have held a job for 44 plus years and am only 60. So once I get caught up on the many ideas we have for inside and outside the house, I'm sure I'll get some kind of paying job.
We put in a pond some years ago and built up around it with vegetation and rocks. There was mixed success. Sometimes we had tadpoles and baby fish and sometimes we lost all living things. Other times it would mysteriously empty itself! So, we decided to try a different idea.
The way our back yards were shaped in 1987 allows rain to drain (from the neighbors on our left, if looking out the back of the house) diagonally and the water turns right along the fence line and makes its way down hill to the gutter.
Since we now had an abundance of big granite rocks, flat stones and a lesser amount of various sized quartz rocks, we decided to create a dry creek bed to channel the rain water and prevent it from further washing out areas of grass.
Above, is a panorama photo shot from a rear window of the house. If you click on any photo, a window opens and the photos are larger.
We had previously built a small deck and my wife purchased a ten foot square metal framed gazebo which was covered with tent fabric and had zippered net sides. She erected it, with help from a couple of the kids, over the small deck and added "zero gravity" chairs. That way we could enjoy the sight and sound of the pond and be mosquito-free.
Sadly, the trees above the gazebo/tent stained the fabric and I removed it one year. No amount of effort would clean it. Our daughter moved and gave us her smaller version of the same thing and we decided to take down the large one and recycled the metal.
Above is the framework of that smaller gazebo/tent, sans fabric. The outdoor rug accompanied the tent so we attached it to the small deck and the framework as well.
I used the flat rocks, possibly slate to cover previously washed out areas and filled the gaps with fine gravel. It appears as mortar but isn't. All areas where there are rocks have anti-plant-growth fabric underneath.
Obviously, we needed a large (much larger!) amount of river rocks to fill the stream. We at first bought stones that may be sandstone and are various shades of tan. My wife picked up several bags at another source that she thought were the same but turned out, once the mud was rinsed off, to be gray mostly with other colored rocks and in many sizes. We lost count of how many bags we ended up buying but it was MANY.
Above is the left side of the small deck and flat stones.
From the deck area flowing left and uphill to the neighbor's fence.
Above and below is two views of the area around our magnolia tree.
Below is from the fence side of the same tree.
You can see the variety of river rocks above.
Above is looking downstream from the Magnolia tree.
Above is the view from the deck on the back of our house. My wife came home when I was typing this post. So I went out to meet her and show her the progress. Then our new neighbor, Maria came over. Thus began the three of us trying to communicate in Spanish. When I finally came back in, my display settings had gone form normal to 64 colors and low resolution. After fighting it, I decided to just restart the computer. At first, it was the same, then the Nvidia drivers did their bit and all is normal.
It's been raining steadily for many hours. The flagstones I so artfully arranged on the left side of the small deck are completely submerged. As you can see beyond the deck the creek is no longer dry. We arranged it to empty under the deck and exit the other side as you can see below. The water naturally meanders in an "S" shape around the flagstones on the right side.
Below is a wider view. I read somewhere that "water finds a way". Sometimes where man (and women) do not want it. Also below you can see it makes a right turn......
I'm not quite sure where it goes from here. Filter through the mulch? The top of our driveway lays just beyond that fence. There is a strip of lawn between our driveway and the neighbors and it gets quite swampy during rain. So I think I'm right on that. No stream on the driveway.
I decided to add historical pictures of the pond. Warning: Some people see a resemblance to a certain anatomy in the first shape of the pond. We set it up so water was pumped to the top and ran down the "creek" and into the pond after being filtered.
ASIDE from that, note the spindly tree to the right of the potted plant? It is a cutting from a Corkscrew Willow tree we came across. I put it in a glass of water and it grew roots. The photo above this one is what it looks like now. It never grows upward like the other one we planted which must be 30 feet or more tall, but in fact weeps.
The next iteration of the pond was making my first attempt at a dry creek bed. It's "source" is a large quartz rock next to a weeping cherry tree atop the hill. You can just see it in the top left corner of the photo.
We had originally had thought about running water all the way up the hill, but realized the potential for losing a lot of water along the way.
And the last photo from the original pond setup with the first generation of gold fish. One year, SOMETHING came along and ripped all the water Lilly plants, of which there were many, out of the pond as well as all the fish, but the fish were not eaten. We never did figure out what could have done that. Sigh.
But the pond days are over, the last two fish now reside in a neighbor's pond and no doubt are much happier in their new pond.
Thanks for looking. We are rapidly approaching 100,000 page views. I can't believe it. But many people tell me they really enjoy my writing and photography and have learned from it.
Scott
UPDATE 5/11/2017 BELOW:
Since we are getting more beneficial rain here in Virginia (no drought this year!) I took the opportunity to go out on the deck and document how well it is or isn't working. Below are the results from the same position as the photo above this paragraph.
Then continues parallel to the fences heading toward the front yard/driveway.
ORIGINAL POST CONTENT BELOW:
I decided to add historical pictures of the pond. Warning: Some people see a resemblance to a certain anatomy in the first shape of the pond. We set it up so water was pumped to the top and ran down the "creek" and into the pond after being filtered.
The next iteration of the pond was making my first attempt at a dry creek bed. It's "source" is a large quartz rock next to a weeping cherry tree atop the hill. You can just see it in the top left corner of the photo.
Above, as you can see, the tree is larger, but it must have been early Spring.
But the pond days are over, the last two fish now reside in a neighbor's pond and no doubt are much happier in their new pond.
Thanks for looking. We are rapidly approaching 100,000 page views. I can't believe it. But many people tell me they really enjoy my writing and photography and have learned from it.
Scott
