Keeping Busy in the Garden

After the cold snap last week we thawed out over the weekend and the temperatures were quite pleasant again, so much so that we got stuck into a few more jobs in the garden. Just for a change (lol) we got stuck into the pond project again. The pipe work we started in this blog is now coming along nicely for connecting up the pond filters, all that remains now are a few small connections and having received a delivery of a couple more parts we can get that finished soon.

When I had initially drawn up plans for the filter house the idea would be to have space available to store items and possibly keep various other koi related paraphernalia such as a microscope (for identifying pests/parasites on samples that would be taken from the koi). However it quickly became apparent that this would make the pipe work quite tricky to fit into such a tight space. We therefore decided to set up the filters in the best layout and make our lives much easier in setting everything up. This has given the space a more spacious feel and also will make moving about in there a much easier task in future. We may have to introduce some additional storage in the garden to fit things in, we may create a garden storage chest similar to these from Hayes.

When ever we work in the filter house Twinkles comes to watch (or rather sleep) with us.

Filling up the Bead Filters with the filter media

With the wet weather it was amazing how much water had accumulated in the small water feature. As this currently has pipe connections into the filter house (but no filter on the end) I wanted to drain this in case the water levels got too high. We are going to have some fun with this small pond, intending it to complement the main pond but not be quite as serious! I may add some lights to it, but one other thing I had seen was a pond mister with built in lights, its even remote controlled so a perfect gadget! Although small this pond will as I mentioned have a filter connected to it. We will probably add fish, perhaps a shoal of goldfish, although maybe keeping with the white theme on the deck area perhaps we should go for fish that are more white rather than orange.

The smaller water feature (photo from Danger Garden's visit to our garden as I realised
I don't have a recent photo and its dark now!)

The smaller water feature will have a small fountain, the pipework for which are all now in place. We just have to connect up the pump and filter. Whilst this would be a quick job (far quicker than the filter set up for the main pond), it will be one of the final jobs we undertake, mainly to avoid adding extra items to the filter house. 

The main pond also still is empty of water, although that hadn't stopped rain from getting in, so we emptied that too. The water that had been sitting there was getting stagnant and I didn't want to risk it freezing if we had a very cold snap. We got that emptied and Mark washed the walls down to remove any fibreglass dust that may remain there. Fortunately we have a small pond pump to remove the water, to save us having to do it all by scooping the water into buckets.

As we have mentioned in previous blogs we are members of the local Koi club, they held a pond show recently, which we were not ready to enter, hopefully next year we will be able to if we choose.

Judge Gary Pritchard at one of the ponds in the Kangei Garden Show

Its great to be so close to completing this project, I was asked recently if I was looking forward to the Christmas break, and although I am looking forward to the celebrations to be honest I'm more looking forward to completing this project. To be now so close to finally filling the pond up and moving our fish into there new home is the biggest excitement to look forward to at the moment!  Gaz