The Pond's Scum

The man we bought our house from was a masonry contractor. I wrote him a letter that he never received, but placed it visibly online. This means that certain parts of the house are in tip-top shape and amazing. It also means that the bathroom isn't on a switch, so we have to turn the entire house "off" in order to do electrical work in there. When we were looking to buy the house two years ago, the man had just planted wild flowers in the garden. We were like, "okay," and paid the price in August when they became a force to be reckoned with. Bright vibrant shades only found on the side of the road off of highways with signs that read "Please Do Not Mow the Wild Flowers." We pulled them out and they kept coming back bigger and thicker and greener and uglier than ever.

One of the main reasons for buying the house was for the backyard. Our, then, one dog had a great yard to run in and call her own. This was obviously before we brought home Raible and, two months ago, Fauna Leena.

The yard came equipped with a pond. We thought, "how amazing," and when the fall came that year, we didn't cover it up. Leaves fell into the water and by the time it had frozen through winter, thawed in the spring and boiled in the hot days of summer, a stew of dead leaves, algae, bugs, bird poop, squirrel carcases and dead babies made the water such a murky green that I swear I saw Shrek bathing in it one morning.

Armed with my 6 gallon shop vac, I took to sucking out all the water, filth and ew that was wading around, weighted to the bottom, of the pond. After about an hour of hauling water to the driveway where we have a large storm drain, it was empty. Steph and I spent two hours looking for rocks to put on the bottom of it at Menards, the Wal-mart, Hobby Lobby, Lowes and finally settled on glass beads to line the bottom instead of rocks. And now for the revealing of beauty:

Comments

Epimenides said…
Fantastic job mate!And the glass beads at the bottom give it that extra glitter! Good job!
Anonymous said…
Wow...what a difference! Good idea!
Anonymous said…
Yuck! You cleaned that? Impressive!
Rebecca said…
That really does look fantastic. I imagine you'll be covering it up this fall, yes?