Pondering

This summer has been very dry, and our pond was about the lowest we've ever seen it. It always gets low by August, but this year the water had shrunk so that only the deep end had water. This left the shallow end high and dry.

Originally, we had planned that one end of the pond would be a "beach" area, and we had it built shallow at that end for swimming. That didn't work out. With it being so shallow, that allows the sunlight to penetrate to the bottom soil of the pond, which makes plant life flourish. Including the scummy floating plant life, the stinky stuff. Not an incentive for swimming.

Last year, Kev took advantage of the summer dry spell and decided to start digging out the shallow end of the pond, making it deeper. We're hoping this will help cut down on the plant growth. This year, he had plenty of room to do more digging there.

First he shoved the sand up on one edge...



Doesn't really look like all that much, but it is an enormous pile of sand...



He took the sand out of the pond using the front bucket of the tractor... about a couple of hundred trips in and out of the pond...



He said he actually got sick and tired of hauling sand, but Barney loved it...



It looks nice now, and the water is already filling in again...



We also have a huge stockpile of sand, ready to use for trails and fill and whatever else we want. Kev is pretty dang handy with that tractor.