More Pond updates (second page)

It's Spring here in Michigan (April 8) and my pond started thawing. This is the first we have seen of it with water in the newly dug areas since we dug it last year, so I was excited to see where the water level is now and to see my goldfishies swimming around too.
Snapped some new photos of the newly filled newly dug areas of the pond, even though there is still some ice on the center and south parts.

If you scroll down to the pictures of the arbor I built last year, you can see the changes since last fall, as the entire area around the dock and between where I'm standing and the dock was bare ground last fall after the redig. and now it is full of water..the new plantings along the edges of the pond are mostly pretty much invisible at this point in the spring, but they will leaf out and grow and be beautiful soon. In this photo you can still see a pile of clay on the far side, right that has to be moved..this is the North end of our pond looking west toward the apple tree.

Here I'm standing on the North shore of the pond looking south east, there is a shallow area with a lot of cattails that reaches out into the center of the North end of the pond, just North of the island, and then the pond continues south and west of this photo as well as the north end continues to the east. Here you can see the above pile of clay that has to be moved as well as more clay on the SE end of the pond that will be  removed or levelled this year. In this area is where I put all the pillars of rocks last year, here is a photo of some, you can't really see them but there are goldfish hiding under the rocks. If you look at the pond pictures on the other posts you will see the pillars of rocks when the pond was dry last fall.

Here I am standing beside the apple tree  (that grew from seeds of apple cores thrown out, it has lovely golden apples on it that are dry and mealy, I like them) on the NE end of the north part of the pond, looking back toward our food garden on the northwest side, you can see our toolshed that I made out of pallets (grey) on the far side of the pond and the neighbor's pole barn (yellow) and their swingset (red) across our property line. Eventually the windbreak planted between our house and theirs along the fence will grow up and that is mostly mixed evergreens, which will protect our garden and give us both some privacy.(windbreak contains jack pine, white pine, austrian pine, canadian hemlock, hoopsei spruce, and others)

Our pond is divided into two sections, the North section ..then there is a center island with two channels around the island on the east and west, and then the South Section which is closer to our house and Joel's house..which were all redug last year. Here I'm standing between the north and south section just North of the island, looking toward the woods and North bank that are North of the North section of the pond..there are lots of things planted along the north edge but those are barely visible this early in Spring. (there are 3 trails that go North through the woods from this area, the woods is mostly aspen, alder, ash, red maple, oak and wild cherry, but there is another seeded apple tree along one of the trails)

This is now the South section of our pond, which is still mostly frozen except along the warmer edges. You can see our house south west of the pond, it looks a lot closer than it is to the pond in this photo. To the right is the island, which you can see sticking out into the water, the pond goes around the island to the west and then to the North (as seen in above photos)..this area was mostly redug last summer and has very few plantings up by the edges of the pond..except a few evergreen trees, barberry and euonoymus bushes, and south of the pond a weeping willow tree in the open lawn. West of the island there are some baby plants that I put in the last couple of years that will be growing up in a low access area.

Here I am in the same place the previous photo was taken from but now I have turned to look NW on the North side of the island showing the channel going around the island on the N and E, but it also goes around the west, and connects to the previous photos of the North pond section (kinda shaped like a figure 8).
I like how this new area here is turning out as it has some rather shallow bank areas where it will be nice for animals to come and drink and children to play by the water, I plan to sow this area where I'm standing to grass and allow the grass to go right up to the edge of the water here, to my right here is a large lilac bush and to my left is a euonymus bush and 2 evergreens, it would be a nice spot for a picnic table in the future. Behind me here is a field and lots of baby evergreen trees visible in the first photo, and they are growing nicely, we plan to put a bridge over the drain creek and we keep trails mowed in through the trees and field that will connect with the trails in the woods across another bridge, there is also a driving bridge to the south by Joel's house. Our house is shown in the photo below looking straight west across south of the island toward our back yard. In the photo below that is a euonymous bush.

In this photo you can see where the pond is in relation to Joel's house, the South side of the pond is North of his back yard. There are 3 trees planted between his house and the back yard, a red leaf maple, a silver maple and a weeping willow that will provide some nice shade as they grow up. Joel's house is west of our house, ours is on the right side and his on the left..as we gave him a piece of property to build on, he owns the field/evergreen tree area and swamp to the west of our pond, about 5 acres and we have our land, and around the pond and north of the pond about 5 acres so we together have about 10 acres.

Only the far south and part of the north banks of the pond are visible from our back yard garden area, in this photo, you can see from this it isn't as close to the house as it appears, and when the gardens are leafed out and grown up in the summer you can hardly see it from the garden at all, until you walk down the hill toward it. We have a lot of shrubs in the garden that when they leaf out make this area quite private, there are red leaf barberry and smoke bush and plum, also lilacs, spireas, hydrangeas, honeysuckles etc.. In the photo the south part is visible on the right and the north and dock are visible on the left, the center and island area aren't visible at all in this photo.

It will be fun to see when the plants start to grow again. We will be trying to put in a flowing well in the future with an overflow on the NE by the apple tree, and also we will be putting in more water lilies and lotus and water plants this year and probably will be putting in more varities of fish as well as moving the clay and dirt piles and leveling around the pond and planting the newly dug edges and lawn areas..it will be quite a project, but we have a lot of other things we are doing this year as well..like replacing an entire deck area, repairing and rebuilding fences and arbors that were damaged in the windstorms, etc..and I am recovering from surgery last week, so I'll be taking things slow, including cleaning up the winter mess..which is quite visible around the yard in the photos..but I'm taking this spring easy and slow while I recover. Lots of things I'll be wanting to do. Also have a lot of plants coming this spring that will be planted in the food garden, including several new blackberry and raspberry bushes, gooseberries, and other berry shrubs.



Finished building the pond arbor today. Ron found some lattice scraps when he was going through the garage addition so I hauled those out today and put them up on the arbor. Yesterday my baby  apricot tree "white pearls" and my baby seedless grape vine "tickled pink" that I
Today it is the day before a huge blizzard in February. We had a thaw in December and the pond was beginning to fill up from snow that Joel has been pushing toward the pond all winter. It is looking so much nicer having water in it that connects betwen the excavated areas that were enlarged last fall.
 had on order came, and I planted the grape on the arbor and the apricot to the NE of the arbor.

I also finished cutting down all the tag alder trees on the East end of the North part of the pond, partially cutting out a path around the pond, but there is work to do to finish the path. All the alder trees are in piles waiting to be run through the chipper.

Here is a photo of the dock, arbor and the trees on the far side of the pond BEFORE the arbor was finished and the alder trees were cut down. You can see that the alder trees block the view across the field and also they are crowding the baby apple tree.











February 1, 2011 : Today it is the day before a huge blizzard in February. We had a thaw in December and the pond was beginning to fill up from snow that Joel has been pushing toward the pond all winter. It is looking so much nicer having water in it that connects betwen the excavated areas