Build a natural swimming pond – Pt 7

Boys and Their Toys…

OK – it’s been a while! But before I could continue with the latest antics of our swimming pond project, I had to take a deep breath. Why? Because although the overwhelming feedback for my first series of posts was positive (for which I thank you), the last post seemed to raise a few male hackles.

Now, I don’t have a problem with negative feedback – I’m a big girl. But I do have a problem when that feedback attacks me as a person. I’m a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend and most importantly, the mother of three young girls. I’m a real person and as I said in my very first blog –

” … I’m very honest. … there are nearly as many “how not to” points as there are “how to” points. There are plenty of tears, tantrums and laughs in our lives, and “The Swimming Pond Project” is no different.”

Comments, questions and feedback are welcome – positive or negative. But please don’t feel you have a right to insult me as a person.

So, with the air now cleared, we can get onto the good stuff…

We’ve dug a hole, put a fibreglass shell in it, backfilled the hole and half filled it with water. It hasn’t rained in months so the pond is going to stay that way for a while.

Still on the to do list – Install water feature; dig another hole for the reed bed, then fill it back in with gravel (why is this such a constant theme); collect reeds; build retaining wall; install pool fencing; and pave.

We’ve spent weeks looking for a water feature that suits our overall design. Online options have been exhausted and we can’t find anything we are happy with. On a whim we head down to a landscaper we know who has just gone out of business. We check out some obscure things and then spy a huge piece of sandstone. It was meant to be a tombstone, but never quite got finished. Actually it hardly even got started ?

We throw some ideas around and for the first time in a while hubby and I agree on something. Better still, the price agrees with our non-existent budget.

We go home and dig yet another hole (another constant theme of the project) so that about 30% of our rock will be underground. Next day hubby hooks up the trailer to collect our bit of sandstone.

I have no idea how this piece of information was obtained, but supposedly our little bit of rock weighs 781kg. Even if it doesn’t weight that much, this is going to involve some big boys toys.

So we borrow “the little tractor” from a friend down the road on the basis that the small size will help with maneuvering. Sounds good in theory, but when we try to lift the bit of sandstone off the trailer, the back wheels of the tractor lift off the ground. This calls for Plan B – a bigger tractor!

Three men, two tractors, one big rock, one fiberglass shell to dodge around and one small hole to put something in. I have never been so grateful for the day of appointments and activities I have planned for the kids. I load the girls into the car and go. I figure if I can’t see it, I won’t have to worry about what’s going on.

The stories I hear from the boys when I get home are frightening and even now I don’t know what is fact and what is fiction. One tractor holding another tractor; the rock being dropped (repeatedly); things slipping; sensible men doing less than sensible things. But at the end of the day, it is done without major injury or mishap.

And guess what? Now we get to dig another hole (a.k.a., the reed bed) and fill it back in, but this time with some technical specifications and scientific evidence to help us.

I hope you join me again tomorrow when I share the next chapter of our adventure with you. Don’t forget to share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments box below!

‘Til next week