Pond progress

At the end of March, work finally began on creating a pond in the back garden at Burnbank. Over the course of the five years since I bought the pond liner, the idea in my head was that it would be a rectangular shape. Recently, I managed to find a scrap of paper from 2020 which intimated that the liner measurements were 8m by 6m. So let's crack on!

In the interests of completing the project before climate change renders water even more of a luxury, a local gardening business was recommended to me, and so it was that VB duly arrived, full of enthusiasm and seemingly undeterred by my cautionary tales of tough ground to dig. VB is very much on board with the whole wildlife gardening malarkey. Indeed, he is an interesting chap with whom to discuss environmental matters, not least because he has his own manifesto available on Amazon.

And so it was that we broke ground, although not exactly in a classical rectangular shape. 

By the end of the afternoon, VB was coming around to the idea that the ground was on the hard side, especially as it had seen off his favourite mattock. We had initially thought that we would deal with the slope of the site by digging down further at the highest side, but we were soon disabused of that notion and instead built up the lowest side.

Talk turned towards what might be the first species to visit the pond. However, Mocha had already decided that it would be her.

For various reasons, it was another couple of months before we reconvened for the next stage. I blithely assumed that this would be hours and hours of painstakingly tweaking the contours of the site, making sure all the levels were correct. However, as we didn't have a length of wood anywhere near the diameter of the pond, instead we quickly raked out the obvious rocks and VB set to with some recycled carpet I had gathered.

The weather was ideal for the job, with barely a breath of wind so, in short order, the carpet was covered in fleece underlay, and then the butyl liner.

Once the pond was full, the fleece and liner were trimmed a little, and I was advised to leave everything to settle for a few weeks. I was very grateful to VB for all his help.

The "what will be the first species?" question came to mind again.

 Within 48 hours, however, we would learn the actual answer.

Agabus bipustulatus (with thanks to UK Beetles Fb page for help with ID)

To date, we have counted over 50 of these carnivorous diving beetles swimming around, presumably foraging on insects which land on the water's surface.

Several days later, as we began to introduce a few plants to the pond, we spotted a long, thin creature which we think is a horsehair worm.

As an adult, it is aquatic, but its larvae are parasitoids of insects, and need the host to return to water to complete their life cycle. Some species of horsehair worm can hijack the host's nervous system, altering the host's behaviour to actively seek out water.

Elsewhere in the garden, butterflies and moths are struggling with a change in the weather.

A Red Admiral sheltering from a rain shower in the rock garden

A Knot Grass moth hunkered down from 60mph winds

Hopefully, the sun will return before too long, although at this point in 2024, I do recall that it did disappear behind the clouds for six weeks.