Almost finished (sort of...)
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sissy
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When you fall into ponding you fall in with the whole body and take your soul with you .
I figured I would keep updating this thread, even though it's not quite an introduction anymore =D So, over the course of the fall (last year) and spring (this year) we discovered that the way we used to build the bog and the middle pond was rife with issues. We used plastic garden edging staked into the ground, and then wrapped the liner & rock on a roll up and over it, and found that we were consistently losing water as it was wicking up the folds and over the edge.
We were ok with this (once we discovered the culprit) as the garden edging was only temporary until we could get some suitable rocks to redo it the right way. Well, lo and behold, my dearie got me 2 pallets of weathered pennsylvania wallstone for my birthday! Time to get down to bizness!
Here's where we were this morning. As you can see, the liner and Rock on a roll has been pulled up all around the bog and middle pond to keep water from wicking out and over:
And here is where we are this afternoon! The bog and most of the middle pond have been edged with the new stacked rock:
There's still lots to do... we decided to also do the retaining walls so all the rock matches, and we still have to finish up around the middle pond and redo the waterfalls. Honestly, the hardest part of the whole thing was pulling out the dang stakes that have been buried for the last 6 months. We ended up breaking them off below grade and leaving the rest in as those suckers weren't budging!
And just to close things out, here's a cool pic one of my friends snapped yesterday:
We also decided to nix the rock on a roll for this redo. Since we half buried the bottom course of rocks below water, there's not much reason to keep it and it would just have added extra bulk. We are a little bit tight on extra liner in a few spots, here's hoping this holds >.<
Thanks for reading!
Michele
We were ok with this (once we discovered the culprit) as the garden edging was only temporary until we could get some suitable rocks to redo it the right way. Well, lo and behold, my dearie got me 2 pallets of weathered pennsylvania wallstone for my birthday! Time to get down to bizness!
Here's where we were this morning. As you can see, the liner and Rock on a roll has been pulled up all around the bog and middle pond to keep water from wicking out and over:
And here is where we are this afternoon! The bog and most of the middle pond have been edged with the new stacked rock:
There's still lots to do... we decided to also do the retaining walls so all the rock matches, and we still have to finish up around the middle pond and redo the waterfalls. Honestly, the hardest part of the whole thing was pulling out the dang stakes that have been buried for the last 6 months. We ended up breaking them off below grade and leaving the rest in as those suckers weren't budging!
And just to close things out, here's a cool pic one of my friends snapped yesterday:
We also decided to nix the rock on a roll for this redo. Since we half buried the bottom course of rocks below water, there's not much reason to keep it and it would just have added extra bulk. We are a little bit tight on extra liner in a few spots, here's hoping this holds >.<
Thanks for reading!
Michele
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Very nice!
j.w
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Beautiful!
sissy
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Nice but you do know we never get done ,there are always changes we find to make 
A ponders life is never done
A ponders life is never doneSpent some time this weekend working on the retaining walls around the bog.
We replaced the existing rocks (a mishmash of garden rocks between 6 inches and 2 feet in diameter which you can still see surrounding the lower pond) with the stackable pennsylvania field stone to give everything a more cohesive look. This stackable stone was soooooo much easier to install than the oddly shaped rocks we were using before:
Another view. We still need to redo the lower waterfall and surrounding stone, but honestly, I didn't feel like hopping in, so that's a project for another day.
The rocks on the flower bed to the left in this picture are the type we used to have around the bog retaining wall. As we remove and replace the stone around the pond, we will be repurposing the "old rock" as edging around other beds in and around the yard. #totallyrockobsessed, lol!
Here's a shot of a new flower bed I put in a few weeks ago - the tree is a Golden Shadows pagoda dogwood (pardon the under-deck mess - since we don't have a garage, that is our outside "storage" aka place where we dump things for later use. Need to get in there and try and organize it >.<) Also in this bed are Hostas, heucheras, ferns, and astilbes, and a few other thangs. Long term, I hope to screen the under-deck view with lattice:
We are redoing the path from the patio down to the pond with larger fieldstone slabs from one of our pallets. There's a slope to the area, so they are ending up like steps, which works really well. Here, I'm trying to grow in some sedum to fill in the dirt (it's a magic carpet sedum mix from QVC that I decided to try). Grow, baby GROW!!!
And here's an overhead shot taken from our 2nd story deck.
Color me pooped, lol!
We replaced the existing rocks (a mishmash of garden rocks between 6 inches and 2 feet in diameter which you can still see surrounding the lower pond) with the stackable pennsylvania field stone to give everything a more cohesive look. This stackable stone was soooooo much easier to install than the oddly shaped rocks we were using before:
Another view. We still need to redo the lower waterfall and surrounding stone, but honestly, I didn't feel like hopping in, so that's a project for another day.
The rocks on the flower bed to the left in this picture are the type we used to have around the bog retaining wall. As we remove and replace the stone around the pond, we will be repurposing the "old rock" as edging around other beds in and around the yard. #totallyrockobsessed, lol!
Here's a shot of a new flower bed I put in a few weeks ago - the tree is a Golden Shadows pagoda dogwood (pardon the under-deck mess - since we don't have a garage, that is our outside "storage" aka place where we dump things for later use. Need to get in there and try and organize it >.<) Also in this bed are Hostas, heucheras, ferns, and astilbes, and a few other thangs. Long term, I hope to screen the under-deck view with lattice:
We are redoing the path from the patio down to the pond with larger fieldstone slabs from one of our pallets. There's a slope to the area, so they are ending up like steps, which works really well. Here, I'm trying to grow in some sedum to fill in the dirt (it's a magic carpet sedum mix from QVC that I decided to try). Grow, baby GROW!!!
And here's an overhead shot taken from our 2nd story deck.
Color me pooped, lol!