Starting small

One day much earlier in the year, in a flurry of activity, we began work on digging a pond in the front garden. For a variety of reasons, only one of which was the weather, things did not progress any further, leaving a bank and ditch in the middle of the lawn. In fact, there was another thing which didn't happen through the Spring and Summer, our walk around the three mile loop of the Stromness Loons. It's weird, we'd both been keenly looking forward to see what birds would breed in the wet pasture of the Loons, but Life just seemed to get in the way.

One afternoon last week, we did finally have a wander around the loop, six months on from the last time, although of course the breeding season is well and truly over for 2024. Passing the poet's house, we noticed a riot of colour at one side of their garden, then noticed said poet mowing his lawn and remarked upon the profusion of gorgeous blooms. It turns out that he had begun to dig a pond, failed to get much further, and his partner had scattered wildflower seed on the mound of earth. I sheepishly admitted to having a stalled pond project too, just without the colourful additions.

Here's the current state of play in our front garden:

On the right hand side of the above photograph, you can just make out the edge of an old Belfast sink, and yesterday we did have a conversation about where we could possibly site it. The options were many: front garden near the pond; or not near the pond; back garden by the patio; or in the meadow area; or even by the front door. These discussions did not reach a firm conclusion but, this morning, Megan announced that her favourite option would be the meadow, as it has a damp area which would be a suitable place to put some wet-loving plants, surrounding the mini-pond. Perhaps out of frustration at my lack of pond progress, I took this as my cue to crack on before we changed our minds. Fortunately, the meadow had its annual mowing recently, so after a quick bit of measuring, the turf was removed from an area just a little larger than the ceramic sink.

Mocha watches on 

Once the hole was of sufficient depth, we managed to carefully transport the sink from the front garden to the back and gently lower it into the ground.

We added some rocks and a bit of log to allow any small creatures which fall in the water to be able to clamber out again.

It's probably the wrong time of year to be thinking about adding a few plants, but we need to research which species are native and won't take over the space. I am just relieved that there's finally a water body in the garden, even if it is a bit bijou.