Wednesday, 6 February 2019
The pond materials arrived from The Pond Guy a day early.
We were determined to get the small pond done.
Snow had melted in Allan’s garden on the east side of the house.
Some plants have been laid flat.
Between the house and shed, snow still lingered, blanketing some of my plant sale plants. Even the plants without the protective white blanket appear to have survived the cold, down to 26 F at night.
I’d feel more secure if I had been able to fit all of them into the greenhouse.
I recently learned from Gardeners’ World that I could have put winter dormant plants under the greenhouse shelving. Too late for this year. Next year, that will make more room.
Snow still lay firmly over the back garden, despite sunshine.
I was pleased to find that my special Dan Hinkley plant that I bought at last summer’s Hardy Plant Weekend, now in a pot too heavy to move, seems ok with the cold. I had asked him what plant I should buy that would make other gardeners envy me and he said this one. (I should look up the name. The pond is distracting me.)
I eagerly went to the little pond, only to find that the ground was frozen solid so that the edge could not be sculpted. Happily, after an hour indoors, the temperature warmed enough so that we were able to carve out the plant shelf edge in a different spot (the thawed side!) than I had planned. The frozen side will be the gentle slope that frogs (and I hope not raccoons) are said to like.
I almost forgot to be like Monty Don and use a board and level.
It was perfect.
I raked the snow from around the pond to avoid working on a mat of ice.
Allan was glad to have the Nora House driveway for laying out the underlayment and liner. Later, I saw a hint on Gardeners’ World: Monty said to lay out the liner in the sun for an hour to warm up. I don’t think that would have helped today. He uses a butyl liner. Our is heavy but not that heavy. (I think we could have bought butyl liner from Firestone…but Pond Guy has a good reputation so we went with his, which is, by the way, heavier and cheaper than Home Depot’s liners).
I was glad the underlayment is dark, not white.
We were able to run hoses from two faceted water barrels to fill it up.
I wanted to put rocks all around…but the temperature had dropped so much and dusk was fast approaching.
That’s as far as we got today.
Your snow is disappearing! Yay! I wish mine would . . . Interesting to watch as you create that pond. Good thing you have Skooter to help. Looks like he knows how to balance work with relaxation.
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Yes, he does.
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You are making your vision of a pond come true! You are troopers to work in the winter cold, but will have a pond to enjoy for years. We are snowed in (again), looking forward to this all melting.
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Our snow is gone but it’s too cold to start our work season.
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A good start to the pond.
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Thanks, Mr T!
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Neither sleet nor rain nor snow…stops the dedication of a determined gardener on a mission!
Well done you two.
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You are so right. Once a project takes hold, we are in its grip.
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I don’t mean to change the subject, but what is the Dan Hinkley plant?
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I can’t remember, isn’t that awful, although I will go through my notes later and try to name it next time I show it.
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Oh, I do not mean to trouble you with it. It got my attention because it looks like a yucca of some sort.
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I want to know, too. Just a bit lazy about looking it up in an old blog post. But you have inspired me.
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Got it.
Fascicularia pitcairnifolia from the Alerce Andina in S Chile
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Oh wow! I was WAY off. I have heard of that. It is more like a bromeliad that a yucca sort of perennial that I mistook it for.
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I’d never heard of it either. I asked him to recommend a plant so cool that I’d have the only one on the peninsula. 🙂
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When I grew all the yuccas, I had some that were so very rare that they might have been the only specimens in California. The problem was that the main reason that they were so rare was that no one wanted them. Compared to the more popular prettier sort, they were quite unappealing.
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Interesting!
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