Thursday, August 5, 2010
The "'All Decked Out" Story
It was an ordinary day. We were sitting by our pond which we have on the bank behind our house. When we moved to our "Beach House" in Lancaster, we had the wooden walks and wooden deck that made it look like the beach, but we had no water. So, we decided to put in a pond. The bank behind our deck was totally overgrown when we bought the house so we had a landscaping service come in and remove all the weeds and plant beach grasses on the bank. "Make it look like the beach," we told the service. We also asked them to install a pond that had a waterfall flowing from the side of the pond. While digging the hole for the pond, they encountered total rocks. They had to use pick axes in order to break through the rocks. They told us that they may have to blast in order to have a hole the size we wanted and they would need a license and township approval to do that. Could also effect the foundation of our house. We settled for a pond that didn't have the original depth we wanted. The following summer I decided I was going to try myself to dig it deeper, so I moved all the large rocks and the liner and started digging. Didn't work! Solid rock. Our neighborhood used to be a quarry and now I knew why. I decided that if I couldn't dig deeper, I would make the front of the pond higher. Worked great. Pond was the depth we had wanted to help fish survive the winter months. Then, three summers ago Carol thought it would be nice if we could have the water coming into the pond from the large evergreens we had behind the pond rather than from the waterfall on the side of the pond. Took my digging iron and dug a channel from the trees to the existing pond. Put a liner in it and laid river rock and viola, we had a stream that looked really natural. Over the past two years we have had minor problems with water evaporation and some leaks, but the pond has given us the water that we needed to make our back deck the "beach" that we wanted. And, the sound of the water flowing over the edge of the pond into the pool below is extremely relaxing. The "Beach House" is now complete. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy. PS - Pixs are from top: preparation for planting the grasses and digging the pond, original pond with waterfall and grasses and pond as it appears today with the water flowing from the trees and cascading into the pond below.
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