From kitchen to pond

Describing the steady progress made with tiling our kitchen walls is of no real interest to anyone not directly involved so we will not dwell on it any more here. Hanging over us throughout the whole process is the 'Have we ordered enough tiles?' question, something which any kitchen fitter regularly faces. As it turns out we find ourselves with a whole box left unused, which naturally begs the question, 'Where else can we put them?'

Anyway, that's both sides of the kitchen completed decoratively and on the end walls, where we decided we needed to add some colour to the otherwise grey/white palate, we are very pleased with the effect we have achieved. A recent visitor remarked that we were steadily bringing our home decor into the twenty first century, a comment that we were delighted to hear.

This could be the last kitchen picture ever to appear here. The inset shows where we started just over twelve months ago. Job done!

So moving on...

It has been some months since our garden pond featured in this blog so perhaps it is time for an update. No? Well here it is anyway.

Our rear garden is on a slope, from the back fence down to the house, so any pond was always going to have to be a hole in the ground with a dam below it, a soil bank, to contain the water. As it turned out our wet climate ensured that the hole filled with water from the moment it was dug and originally we thought it might retain a certain level of water without the need for a liner. But when a dry spell last spring reduced it to a muddy puddle we decided a plastic liner would be needed after all. Then, in order to keep the pond water level constant, we fitted an overflow pipe which took away the surplus, all of which seemed to work well until the real rains started in September.

Suddenly, almost overnight, the pond liner started rising, forced upwards by the pressure of the ground water from beneath. How this could be happening in a sloping garden seems to defy logic but the effect of this was that as the plastic liner rose higher the water inside the pond was forced out through the overflow until almost nothing was left. The pond life which had spent the summer months galavanting about above and below the surface were now living in a shallow puddle, if they survived at all. Even large rocks placed into the pond (rocks being heavier than water) failed to counter the pressure from beneath - they too were being lifted up! All this goes to show is how little we know about what is happening beneath our feet. There are forces at work that we could never imagine.

Initial attempts to try to relieve the pressure from below by poking a long metal spike horizontally into the ground below the dam in an effort to create a passage for the ground water to escape had no effect at all. More rain arrived and despite it falling into the pond itself, this was always countered by more pressure from below so nothing changed. 

After much contemplation we realised that it is merely a matter of balance between two opposing forces. The pond overflow is constantly draining away the excess water and this means that as the pressure from below increases, it lifts the liner and more pond water flows out of the overflow.  It follows that as this happens the weight of water in the pond decreases so it is unable to resist the force from below. It took a while but once the simple logic of this was recognised the solution became clear. The pond overflow pipe had to go.

The result was almost instantaneous. Several days of heavy rainfall and the pond had water in it again, the liner having being squashed down under the weight. We now have a pond, deeper than planned, but one with water in it. When it fills now (which doesn't take long given the rainforest climate here) the weight of water in the pond increases to counter those hidden and mysterious underground forces. Eventually the pond water will overflow the edge of liner and the excess will run down into the boggy area further down the garden. This is now a small wetland that we will keep suitably unkempt in the hope that this might be attractive to some other wild creatures.

As autumn moves on and winter sets in there is little to see from our observation perch beside the pond. The pond skaters have all gone although there is still the odd beetle scuttling about beneath the surface. The wild plants (commonly described as weeds) surrounding the pond have extended across the water (as intended) in the space of less than a year but we must wait until next year for what we'd really like to see... frogspawn. Should there happen to be a lady frog passing nearby we can just hope she might be attracted to our fledgling wildlife haven. Would a 'Frogs Are Welcome Here' sign help?