Look! Let's Go Fishing!

At long last, water garden!

We braved the heat when it was at its least in the morning and mortared in the first course of flat rocks around the pond's edge. They hold the liner in place, and hide the homely black rubber.

This first picture is the front of the pond. A brick holds in place two stones that ended up a little more sloped than we'd intended. Once the mortar was set, the brick disappeared.

Bernie had been toying with the idea of a waterfall (and still is) but thought that the pond needed the sound of water to make it more inviting. He rescued my chipped frog fountain from under a bush and hooked it up to the pump.
It made a perfect cascade out to the middle of the pond. If you scroll back a few entries, you can see that the frogwater is falling right into where I was digging the deepest part of the pond.

Finally, this is the view from the porch. We'll have a little table out there for cool morning breakfasts with the sound of water and the sight of fish. When this picture was taken, the fish weren't in there yet; they were still in their little fishpond in back of the house. Bernie transported them when the shade came around to the pond. They were unhappy about being moved, but this morning they were swimming around the big pond in a school.

Saturday we'll finish the second course of stones around the edge.

Incidentally, a smaller toad showed up in the swimming pool and was also subsequently plopped into the fishpond. He crawled out immediately and set off down the front lawn towards the trees. I guess if you can't have chlorinated water, there's not much in going swimming for a city toad.