Finally got around to painting the wood trim today.I am very pleased with the out come.
My Sunday project Pond fun
Now I'm looking at pond de-icers its already dropping down into the 40's tonight.....makes me sad.Minnesota from summer to winter lol.
Pond looks great as does the rest of your yard.
Your thinking cold and we are still sweating like crazy. I love the fall of the year.
Enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Looks great. Will you grow some climbers on the trellis by the fence. To sort of block out the neighbor's yard. A beautiful clematis or rose. I have trouble growing either one up here except rugosa which are not climbers.
Mary
Have you tried a William Baffin rose? They are part of the Canadian Explorer series. My New Dawns, I bought from a rose company in Canada - Pickering Nurseries. Check them out. I swear by them.
Queenie - I like the idea of a clematis on your trellis too. Ideas as to what you will be putting there? Your yard is already so beautiful.
I have read about them Carolyn. I bought an Emily Carr (part of the Artist series) last year and it was gorgeous and strong. But it didn't come back this year. It is part of the Morden family. Morden Fireglow, however, has come back year after year. I need to move it though as the Ligularia on one side and the Amur maple on the other have put it into too much shade. Hate to move it but it has survived moves before so hopefully I won't kill it off.
Do you have photos? I would love to see it.
I have photos from last year. This year has been so wet the blooms were soggy almost as soon as they popped. Will look for them and post some. It does indeed seem to glow.
I found these two in 2013. Not the best. the other is the one I have in my database as representative of the data attached to the flower name.
Beautiful!
Gorgeous Mary. I love your gardens!
Alrighty,
So I'm getting a bit further with the new pond...don't have the upper water falls and stream done yet, but had to take advantage of the 500lb liner being moved while my strong son in laws were here!
Picture 1 - west end Picture 2 - east end
Due to the insanely intense rain we've had, it's filling up, and I'm not ready for it to just yet! :)
The east upper right corner has a ledge about 5 x 4 to put my water lilies on, it's only maybe 12 inches deep. They are smaller tropical lilies...once I split them, the rest go to Bonnie!
Once I get the water fall completed, the rest of the rock will go around. No rocks inside.
Then the plants...... Lilies, water iris, lotus, and umbrella palm.
Up the stream and around the water fall will be very tropical and jungley. Cannas, coleus, caladiums, etc.
Looks great MM!
All central Florida ponders check out our round up info here
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1377527/
edited to fix link
This message was edited Sep 30, 2014 8:20 PM
Pond is looking amazing with my serviceberry tree next to it.aww fall in Minnesota.I'm going to buy a heater and build something to cover it slightly.
A couple more pics
Yards looking amazing right now to everything is coloring up nicely
Booo to winter
You have beautiful landscaping. Looks like you put your neighbors to shame.
Love all the fall colors but I remember what that meant when I lived where I was raised in Conn.
Cold, ice and snow. YUK
Enjoy all that color while you can.
Finally getting somewhere! Main pond is done (but not planted or decorated) Working on the waterfall stream (upper left) which is about 20 feet long and 4-5 feet wide, with a 3 foot planting birm on the one side.
Holy cow. It is huge. And the koi are equally huge. Guess it's 'location, location, location.' lol
That's why it took me so long. I had to shovel the whole thing by hand, no equipment will fit through our tiny side yards. I still have a massive pile of dirt to figure out what to do with. Most fish in there are around 24-30 inches. Sadly, I will have to get rid of some of them, it's already overloaded and I have others still in the small pond and pool. I keep trading them back and forth to see what colors look best, and then will get rid of the rest.
That is almost (not quite) funny. Color matching your fish. Over the top!! lol
I cannot imagine hand digging that pond. Any guess on how many tons of dirt that is. Can't you make a kind of rolling landscape, especially around the edges of your property. And obviously getting height for your falls and stream would be a good use also.
We're trying to fill in little areas with sand. That's all we have here in Florida, and the area all around us is flat as a pancake. The waterfall even slightly looks out of place because hills aren't a common thing here in Orlando. Most of the sand went into a birm for the falls, but I had to outline it with cement block walls, otherwise sand just goes back to flat everytime the wind blows :) Yesterday I used the canned construction foam to help hold areas of sand around the cement block, so my waterfall won't collapse. I know Bonnie had to put wood walls around the inside of her pond so the sandy walls wouldn't collapse. I offered it as clean fill dirt on CraigsList, but because you can't get equipment into my tiny back yard, no one wanted to hand dig the pile out of here. Que sera, sera....I'll figure something out! :)
Yes. I can see you have a problem. Sand is not a good 'texturing' material. So in order to get 'rid of' the excess sand you have to bring in some other material to contain it. Shoot. Bring in Gravel and concrete mix and make concrete out of it. That would hold up !! :) My husband and I poured the footings for our house many years ago. It was built on wooden beams that had rotted after the '67 flood. So we jacked it up, drilled 6' holes every few feet and filled them with concrete (using our small electric mixer) to form a solid base, then built the forms over them. Then we had the concrete truck come in so we had a continuous pour for the footings. 4 rows of block, drop the house, and we just made it before snow flew that winter. What a job.
Wow! That IS a job with a hand mixer!!
Yeah. It took a while. The house was small 20x40. After the forms were built and the cement truck came, when they started to pour a span that had no dirt support, just maybe 5' across the forms sagged and we started losing concrete. Jim raked it back from the break, stopped the pour and reinforced. This was not a pretty project. Oh, we also crawled in the dirt crawl space, about 3' in height and slid new floor joice up next to the old ones that were rotting on the foundation end, used a jack to get them all aligned, then nailed them together. Miserable job but it all worked. Our heat was an oil stove in a 4' hollowed dirt space in the crawl space fed by copper tubing from an elevated 55 gallon drum. When it got really cold, like -25 and lower (much lower) the heating oil would form an ice plus where it went into the wall. Jim would go outside with a blow torch and I would go down stairs and loosed the celinoid to get the fuel run a bit then tighten it up again. All else failed we had a little propane stove (a real one though very small) that we would run to keep from freezing up. Those were the days.
Got the "bones" of the understructure for my waterfall done yesterday. It's so chilly out, I'm going to try to get the liner put on it today, but not sure.
Great 'bones.' Then the stream leads to the falls, right? It must meander through the yard. Where is your biowell?
I won't have a bio-well because I have a large 10,000gallon bio bead filter which will be behind the top of the falls, lead into an Aquascape Waterfall Spillway, down the stream (which will be planted , making a bio area) and drop into the pond. The pond will be planted with Umbrella palm and Purple stemmed taro. The water lilies may or may not make it on the plant shelf due to the koi being so large.
Oh, creme de la creme of filters. Sounds like you have all the bases covered.
In all honesty, I have NO clue....but it's what I'm going with! :)
I guess in 3 months, when I report back, we'll know if it worked or not! lol
I'm a budget person, so always looking at ways to be cheap, yet effective. The bead filter I got at the last Koi show, here in Orlando, on the last day, last 5 minutes, and they just didn't want to pack it all up to ship back. Got it for an $800 discount. $1600 originally. Heck no, I don't have that kind of money for my backyard hobby. So, Craigslist and eBay are my friends, and I figure our ways that good old mother nature got things to work! hopefully.... ;)
Well, dang. Just as I hit send on a fairly long comment my provider dropped out and I lost it all.
Well, in short you scored on that filter. I would have walked around it and around it and suffered the pangs of hell then bit it off and bought it also. No way $800 isn't a big tag. And I am not known for fretting over tags. lol.
But I find it so rewarding to read what you guys have built yourselves, you and Bonnie, and others. You have the process that is in itself rewarding in its creativity. I love DIY, and repurposeing just for the fun of it. I doubt I will have another pond as we are constrained by power lines- buried- a high water table, and not much ground. And it is unlikely we will move in my time. But if I did I would cheerfully steal all I have learned here about getting it done yourself. It is not magic and doesn't require a science degree. Just knowledge of the hobby, willingness to work like a dog (still can't believe you dug out that entire pond by hand) and a sincere interest in building the best you can. Then sitting back and watching your pets enjoy and thrive because of all that work.
The only reason I cracked and paid the 800 was because I wasn't going to pay for anything else except the liner, which I had already purchased the year before. So yep, it took 3 times as long, but it was my own free labor. I got the rocks for free if I was willing to load them myself, and of course, being a cheapo, I was. My hubby helped on that one thankfully!
I've seen some really pretty above ground ponds, so maybe that's a way you could lean? I have a power cable under my pond, which is why it's not as deep as originally planned. Not as much of a problem here in Florida as it would be in your area.
YIPEE, M. Mary,
I am so happy to see the fruits of your labor. I know your fish are happier now. That stream bed is really going to set it off beautifully. I am very anxious to hear your assessment of the bead filter. Doubt I'll ever have one but still interested on how well they perform. Had to replace another pump but Aquatic Eco. honored the warranty so it was free. It's for 3 years and now I've had 2 that didn't last over 2 years. They called mfg. and they told them it was still under warranty. Thank God.
Wish there was a way to get into your backyard with my Kubota. I'd have that dirt out of there in no time. Charlie built some loading ramps for his large 5th wheel hay trailer as we have been hauling lawn mower to church ea. week and mowing. Then they needed my Kubota to level some dirt so he came home and built them. A 42" riding mower will fit into our cow trailer but the Kubota wouldn't. Looks small when loaded but heck it gets it wherever it needs to go. Will the pond fill up most of your backyard. Will cut down on grass mowing which is great. I asked Charlie if he wanted to build a third pond where I can't get grass to grow and I won't say his answer. Which included you must be nuts. The yard is very loud now with 2 waterfalls but I like the sound.
It was 42 here this morning but it will warm up some by noontime. Perfect weather for pond building.
Got pots of cranberry hibiscus and your welcome to some. I realize you don't have many plants now. HaHa Heck plant up the whole place and forget the grass.
CONGRATULATIONS I just knew you would get er done.
Funny! :)
That was my whole mind set....very little grass to mow! I will have one small area (which I now need to resod) just so the grandbabies have somewhere to sit. The rest is all decks and water!
Sounds heavenly.