Digging the pond...

You've got a lot of work on there and it's going to take some time, but you'll get there and it will look fantastic I'm sure. Be careful moving those boulders. I bet your fish will be happy to swim in their new pond aswell :o)

Love reading of your ongoing progress! BUT ... I challenge the 'can't beat begonias for red' idea! I always claim 'you can't beat pelargoniums or C.Lucifer for red.' Love your Hemerocallis - mine are doing wonders too. Good luck with your pond . :o)

There are a few reds I love....my bright red Mandevilla and
Nasturtium 'Empress of India', along with a bright red Dianthus are doing really well at the moment. The red begonia has a lovely contrast with it's foliage which is a deep dark green....lovely! How I don't envy you that digging with all those stones Lori, but you are going to have an amazing rockery/waterfall/rivulet flowing over them in the end!! :)) Keep on trucking.....envying your sunshine right now! Borders are flooded again :(

Lori....you sure have a project on there....those boulders are HUGE! It will be lovely to have the pond beside your decking...I'll look forward to seeing your progress.

At least you will have plenty of rocks to recycle....that's good news! :)

Yes, I shall, Hywel... it has to be done..my little fishes greet me every morning with hopeful faces!! "Is it done yet?!" lol...
Oh yes, Nariz, the Crocosmia Lucifer!...I want to get some more corms for the garden...got them confused with the Acidanthera ones...not sure which I have coming up in the front door flower bed! The hemerocallis were already here...they require no care whatever! That's why I love them and prefer them to their hybridized offshoots.
Aww. sorry about all the rain Karen. ...seems we're forever waiting for it to arrive or waiting for it to quit! That begonia was a bargoon, only $10. We had a windstorm last night that blew it right off the deck...thankfully it's ok..but the ash tree in the front yard lost it's top! Wicked weather. And you are also right...the Empress of India nasturtiums are fantastic...had them last garden...and the mandevilla which I gave away when we moved in the middle of last winter is gracing someone else's patio this summer. Had a pink one as well.
You are so right, Whistonlass, the boulders are a challenge but there are millions of smaller rocks too...and they will be put to use in the stream or the rockery or the fishpond... having a small crisis of decision...hope I have enough to go around all the places I'd like to use them!

is there no end to your digging powers??
cannt wait to see the pond take shape.
some rocks, do you use any kind of hoist tackle or just elbow grease?
very jealous of those stones, still!
i have to hoist mine from the fields on my morning walks, i think my arms are twice the length they used to be lol
B is beginning to talk about starting our pond project, it has taken a long time but we have had to do so many things which were priority
so far there is a huge hole in the ground at the bottom of the garden, which he dug by hand 5 years ago, and is still/again filled with frogspawn, even after the hole dried out totally a cple of weeks ago.
i am beginning to catch up with all the blogs and photos.
how do you manage to do all the work you do AND spend time on GOY putting on blogs and photos??

To answer your question, Resi, I really don't know ..I just keep on keeping on...lol. find that a sit down at the computer is a great break, physically and mentally.
Will you use a butyl liner for your pond or is there plenty of the sticky clay near you, which is a perfect, natural sealer?
I'm fortunate that there are so many rocks here...I started digging the pond and once down through the topsoil, about 6", there has been nothing but sand, gravel and rocks. I use a fibreglass handled round mouth shovel and a steel garden rake and a selection of lengths of 2x4 to dig them out of the ground. Saw a program on the History channel today, while waiting for my hubby's surgery to be over. the program was about how the Maya moved the huge granite boulders that they used to build Macchu Picchu... it involves two ladders and a lever...ingenious... going to give that some thought moving the boulders near the road...they are huge!

do you mean surgery as in operations?
if so i hope all went well there Lori

we will have to use a butyl liner as the pond area is build up with soil we excavated when building the house.
so it is solid clay till halfway up and then much looser soil on top where it seeps through
although the loose soil is clay too, if we wanted to make it impermeable we would have to puddle it and we dont have the goats or sheep to do it!
about the Mayas and their ladders, levers and rocks , can i feel a garden folly - temple or pyramid - coming up perhaps??

yes, it was day surgery, Resi. OH's recovery seems to be going nicely.
Today was extremely hot...and the weather people are forecasting a very hot dry summer...I worked on the pond (still digging) this a.m. very early and after the sun went down...still extremely hot work...but I'm getting there. you should see the pile of rocks! Good Grief! no follies,temples or pyramids this year. When this is dug and the liner is in...I have to fill the thing and I'm worried about depleting our well. The farmer up the hill from us has widened the stream to put in a watering area for his hogs! As a result our little stream is down to a trickle and there's a lot of green scummy water in the little diversion that I made this spring. It's full of yucky water...But we have frogs!

green scummy water doesnt sound very enticing, still if you have frogs...
the well doesnt supply this stream then?
are you on the mains or well water there?

Our well is drilled to a depth of about 190 ft. but since this is our first summer here we don't really know what the water situation will be. After a dry hot spell we had thunderstorms and lots of rain last night. My son was at
Bluesfest (a music festival in Ottawa) and just as the last two acts of the season were about to perform a strong wind (part of a super-cell storm) blew in and the main stage collapsed. There were three people treated and released. Lucky considering the thousands of people there. My son posted on his facebook from his blackberry that he was OK. I saw the post and hadn't heard the report and wondered what on earth he was talking about...all he said was that he was glad the stage didn't fall on him! We weren't experiencing any weather at that time...but we got our share later.

probably good thing you didnt know anything about it at the time.
we had something like that with the London bombing in - was it 2007?- a text from both our kids in London to say they were save, and we hadnt got a clue what they were on about
unfortunately our neighbour had just gone through a power supply cable with his mini digger, and nobody in our hamlet had any electricity so we couldn't even look it up at tv or internet.

Thank goodness for wireless communications!
We must log on to the CBC News site to get our news...Terry has a little shortwave radio ..and he listens..otherwise I would be in the dark, 'cause I'm lazy about that kind of thing. Used to be a "News Junkie" but with the advent of cable tv we subscribed to a service that was over rated...all there was on it was US tv..violence, and sex! We could get the public broadcasting stations right out of the ether..and that's all we watched. I did a very strange thing...I persuaded my husband that we didn't need to watch tv. We had the cable yanked and never missed it. That was so liberating.