Summer seems long gone now and there’s not much happening in the ponds other than the usual busy backswimmers. Both ponds are clear though and looking healthy, without too much weed, probably due to the endless rain we’ve had recently.
I had assumed I wouldn’t see any frogs or newts, now they have moved out of the pond to shelter under rocks and leaves. But I spotted one in the Lily Pond yesterday, quite well camouflaged, and had my phone on hand to snap it.
There were definitely no lions, so I guess you’re wondering why this blog is titled ‘Lion Pond’. Well, I have been busy creating a third pond – Lion Pond. This one has a more formal oblong shape and a lion statue on guard, which gives a slightly stately home feel to it, in miniature of course.
This has been the hardest pond to create. Lily Pond took much longer because it’s bigger and deeper with shelves and contours, and it took weeks to get the rocks and levels right, but the challenge of Lion Pond has been managing the site, as it is built on the steep slope of the old vegetable plot.
It took two days of planning and digging and a trip to the tip for my husband, to take away the ceramic piping, concrete and house bricks I unearthed. When I created the vegetable plot, we found an igloo-shaped brick structure which may have been an old ice store, and a skip-load of rubble, so I was a bit daunted to find more. I think the builders must have hidden the site waste under the garden when the house was converted at the end of the last century.
I was so busy shifting rubble and trying to keep clean in the muddy building site that I forgot to take ‘work in progress’ photos until the job was nearly done. But Victorian sewage pipes are not that photogenic, so here are the few pictures I’ve taken as the project is nearing completion. The site is still muddy because the expected rain hasn’t happened yet, and I still have to do some planting. A project for another day.
FROG BLOG 