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Great journal and fantastic pond!
Spring fed pond - Step 6: Landscaping and Lighting
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Fall colors and starting to landscape
pweifan, you asked for it! The fall colors were out so I tried to get some "full" shots for you - since I still haven't put mulch over the liner... just squint a bit and the background looks better:icon_idea
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Finally got the spillway stone cut in and foamed in. I like the natural look much better than seeing the black spillway.
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Think this is my last lily of the year - we got a light frost last night.
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pweifan, you asked for it! The fall colors were out so I tried to get some "full" shots for you - since I still haven't put mulch over the liner... just squint a bit and the background looks better:icon_idea
Finally got the spillway stone cut in and foamed in. I like the natural look much better than seeing the black spillway.
Think this is my last lily of the year - we got a light frost last night.
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Oh wow, so beautiful!
Fantastic job.
Fantastic job.
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199 Posts
Everlasting Moonlight
I put in the landscape lighting this weekend. I probably should have completed that while it was still warmer at night, but it looks nice out the windows even so.
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Next on the project list is transforming this large pile of bricks into some type of walkway. Apparently I wasn't clear in what I meant when I asked my husband to bring down lots of bricks (I wanted them to set the plant pots on) and he brought down every single brick he had in storage. I was thinking he would bring a few dozen, not a few hundred....
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After that, it is on to actually making it spring-fed. I will be digging a narrow trench and laying in pipe in gravel to continually collect the water and feed it to the pond. When all that is done, I can finally mulch and cover up that ugly liner just in time for the snow to fall!
I put in the landscape lighting this weekend. I probably should have completed that while it was still warmer at night, but it looks nice out the windows even so.
Next on the project list is transforming this large pile of bricks into some type of walkway. Apparently I wasn't clear in what I meant when I asked my husband to bring down lots of bricks (I wanted them to set the plant pots on) and he brought down every single brick he had in storage. I was thinking he would bring a few dozen, not a few hundred....
After that, it is on to actually making it spring-fed. I will be digging a narrow trench and laying in pipe in gravel to continually collect the water and feed it to the pond. When all that is done, I can finally mulch and cover up that ugly liner just in time for the snow to fall!
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Good eyes, pweifan! Yes it is Forget-Me-Nots mixed with some Creeping Jenny that I pulled from the edge of the lakeshore. Both grow naturally (okay, apparently they are invasive, but they have been in NY "forever" now) thoughout my yard at the lake - around here the F-M-N flower shades range from blue to pink, but I never see the white variety that sometimes is sold. Some would call it a weed, but I love it. I kept the top of the soil about 2 inches above the waterline and it really took off. I plan to add some more of it next spring and it will probably spread out of the pond as well as it seeds itself. Next year I will need to get some good pics of it while it is still flowering - it was covered.
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I'm very close to you, then, Jasmine - we travel Rte 414 on a regular basis. If you need more frogbit or water lettuce for your goldies, let me know - I usually need to thin out my tanks regularly. This summer I just started throwing gobs of it into the pond to get rid of it.
I'm crossing my fingers that everything overwinters well. I don't plan to really do anything special other than turning off the waterfall waterpump, draining the water lines and adding an airpump to keep the surface open once things start to freeze.
I started out with 50 fathead rosy minnows and 9 comet/shubunkin goldfish (2-4 inch) the first of June. The biggest goldfish are easily 8 inches now. At its height, the population exploded to at least several hundred minnows and the goldie pioneers successfully spawned about two dozen new goldfish that are already 2-3 inches long and have beautiful color variety. I don't see many minnows now that the temperatures dropped. I have no idea how many of the juvenile goldies will make it , but they are still eating healthily to put on weight before winter.
I'm crossing my fingers that everything overwinters well. I don't plan to really do anything special other than turning off the waterfall waterpump, draining the water lines and adding an airpump to keep the surface open once things start to freeze.
I started out with 50 fathead rosy minnows and 9 comet/shubunkin goldfish (2-4 inch) the first of June. The biggest goldfish are easily 8 inches now. At its height, the population exploded to at least several hundred minnows and the goldie pioneers successfully spawned about two dozen new goldfish that are already 2-3 inches long and have beautiful color variety. I don't see many minnows now that the temperatures dropped. I have no idea how many of the juvenile goldies will make it , but they are still eating healthily to put on weight before winter.
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We have them both plants here in Ohio as well and I love them
It was only recently that I realized that Creeping Jenny was actually introduced here. (Warning: Complete tangent ahead) I went to a bonsai show and they were selling Lysimachia japonica and it led me to look up what other species of Lysimachia are out there. It was then that I found out that Creeping Jenny is not native to North America. Who knew?!? I also learned of another plant to search for while collecting native plants: Lysimachia thyrsiflora
(Thus ends the complete tangent)
I'm also very curious to see how this over-winters. Good luck! It's looking great so far. Thanks for getting back to me
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Horsehead Bricks - what to do with them? .... with a short history lesson.
So after I changed out all my inverted plastic riser pots with brick platforms for better stability under the pots, I am left with this group of 200+ bricks to make a small walkway or *something*.....
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They are antique bricks that we picked up during a construction dig at the location of the former Horseheads Consolidated Brick Company. During excavation, we found remains of old ovens and other portions of the brickworks including several caches of thousands of broken, used or otherwise discarded bricks. The site builder kept the best of the found bricks to use for decorative work on the apartments being built on the site, and we were free to pick up whatever we wanted that remained. We took home a couple flatbed trailer loads that we have used on various projects over the last 20 years - these are the very last we have left. They are somewhere between around 170 and 50 years old (most likely towards the older end given the rustic handworked styles we found). Most are plain, but several have the H, HH, or two different styles of the HHDS stamp....
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We never found any of the newer? HORSE over HEADS type that are in this file picture I grabbed off the web....
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So after I changed out all my inverted plastic riser pots with brick platforms for better stability under the pots, I am left with this group of 200+ bricks to make a small walkway or *something*.....
They are antique bricks that we picked up during a construction dig at the location of the former Horseheads Consolidated Brick Company. During excavation, we found remains of old ovens and other portions of the brickworks including several caches of thousands of broken, used or otherwise discarded bricks. The site builder kept the best of the found bricks to use for decorative work on the apartments being built on the site, and we were free to pick up whatever we wanted that remained. We took home a couple flatbed trailer loads that we have used on various projects over the last 20 years - these are the very last we have left. They are somewhere between around 170 and 50 years old (most likely towards the older end given the rustic handworked styles we found). Most are plain, but several have the H, HH, or two different styles of the HHDS stamp....
We never found any of the newer? HORSE over HEADS type that are in this file picture I grabbed off the web....
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Wow, that's very cool! With the materials you have available, I think I'd do a combination of bricks and flag stone on the walk. Have the best bricks create the edge of the walk and use broken/different shapes in the walk itself. Kind of like what you're doing now around that big piece of stone. Just make all the stones flush so it's easier to walk on.
This is all really easy to say and probably really difficult to do, so take my suggestions with lots of salt
This is all really easy to say and probably really difficult to do, so take my suggestions with lots of salt
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Looking forward to updates. What a fantastic project
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ZZZZZ until the spring
We got our first snow just before Thanksgiving and I grabbed this shot of the pond. The fish are all tucked in for their winter's nap and the bubbler is in place to keep the oxygen levels up and a spot clear of ice. They say "See you in March".
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We got our first snow just before Thanksgiving and I grabbed this shot of the pond. The fish are all tucked in for their winter's nap and the bubbler is in place to keep the oxygen levels up and a spot clear of ice. They say "See you in March".
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Where did the sun go?
It has been a very cold, snowy winter this year in NY. The bubbler held its own keeping a hole in the ice up to Jan, but then prolonged weeks not breaking the 20 degree mark and lots of snow led to this scene on Feb 22. You wouldn't even know there was a pond there by looking at it:
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We finally had a warm day this weekend and the fish saw light for the first time in at least a month yesterday when the bubbler broke back through! (The smaller holes in the snow to the right are just from where the lights are melting the snow...). I'm crossing my fingers that most of the fish were able to make it somehow. I expect it will still be a couple of weeks before the snow melts enough to look for them.
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It has been a very cold, snowy winter this year in NY. The bubbler held its own keeping a hole in the ice up to Jan, but then prolonged weeks not breaking the 20 degree mark and lots of snow led to this scene on Feb 22. You wouldn't even know there was a pond there by looking at it:
We finally had a warm day this weekend and the fish saw light for the first time in at least a month yesterday when the bubbler broke back through! (The smaller holes in the snow to the right are just from where the lights are melting the snow...). I'm crossing my fingers that most of the fish were able to make it somehow. I expect it will still be a couple of weeks before the snow melts enough to look for them.
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Wow! amazing project!
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