Day Two of the Fishpond Build.

The boys made pretty good progress on day two of the build. We finished the primary pool structure, got much of the tile laid, and put in place the pump for the waterfall including most of the basic plumbing.

As usual for this time of year, the late afternoon sky turned dark with the threat of an oncoming storm. Hard rain not being a good thing for wet cement, the approach of a rainy season soaker sent us scrambling to cover the freshly mortared tub of stones with a tarp, something we didn’t have on hand. Divine sent her brother out on his trike to fetch us one from any store in which he might be able to find one.

Luckily, the storm didn't happen; it turned out to be what I call an "El Nino teaser"—lots of promising dark sky and angry clouds but then only a sprinkle of rain, if that. This time however, I was quite happy to receive only a few sprinkles.

Divine went to a place that specializes in such things and found the Kenji water pump. They tried it out at the store and the volume of water it can move is quite impressive she says, plus it’s supposed to be about the highest quality around here. Of course, around here, that’s not saying much.

Seeing where the pump was to end up at the bottom of the pool prominently centered under the eventual waterfall feature I asked Eddie if we couldn’t design a shelf of stone to jut out directly above it to camouflage it. “No problem,” Mister Can Do answered like he always does. We’ll probably put that in tomorrow.

I urged Eddie and my electrician, Edgar, to think always of how to camouflage all of the manmade parts of the pond and waterfall as much as possible. One problem will be hiding the power cord coming up out of the pool from the pump. Eddie offered the solution to that one. He says we’ll route the cord up and out the side of the pool running it between the stones and then place cement features immediately over the run to make it look as natural as possible. I’m not quite sure what he’s talking about so we’ll see how it works out.

Tomorrow we’ll probably work on finishing the rest of the bottom tiles and start building the structure up that will support the waterfall. I’d like to see it tall enough so that it can easily be viewed from within the porch.

The shape of the pond didn’t turn out exactly as I pictured in my mind but I’m still mostly happy with it. I wanted more of an exaggerated guitar shape, but once the rocks were in place that figure eight aspect was mostly muted out so that it looks more like a rock lined bathtub now. I think once it’s complete though and all the plants are in place, it will look great. In the meantime we are really having a lot of fun making it happen. I guess it’s true what they say about “the journey” and all that philosophical touchy feely stuff…