Judy's Ponderings

My pond in San Antonio, Texas took a year to construct. It was truly a labor of love. There was very little soil to be excavated and a lot of rocks to be removed. In the background of this photo you can see the two piles of dirt that I was able to dig out relatively easily. Since I didn't want to remove the fence and repair the damage a bobcat would have caused, I chose to do the work with a pick and shovel, a bar, and a jackhammer. This picture shows the beginning of the excavation project.

As you can see in this next photo, lots of the rock needed the friendly persuasion of a jackhammer. Yours Truly was chief operator of the jackhammer. Now I can officially put down "Jackhammer Operator" on my resume. All of the rocks that were removed for the hole were incorporated into the waterfall.

This picture show just how much rock was removed from the hole to accommodate the pond. The boards in the pond were used as a "slide" to slide the large (estimated weight 1,500 pounds) boulders out of the hole. First I put a "saucer of wood" under the rock and inched the rock up a slide that was supported by making an incline out of the small rocks that I had already removed from the hole. I used a "come-a-long" and 50 feet of steel cable that was tethered to the base of an Oak tree across the yard to lever the rocks up the slide an inch at a time.

With all the rock that I removed I still ordered three and a half ton of Mexican Tan stone for the edging of the pond. I did all the excavation work and when my husband faced temporay unemployment he lovingly labored to put rock around the edge of the pond. I think that officially made it "Our Pond." The pond lilies bloomed all summer as he completed the rim and capping stone.

Success at last. Here is the completed pond with the waterfall. The pond is 15 feet long and 9 feet at the widest point. It is 2 ½ feet deep at the waterfall and 3 feet deep at the front edge.

For those inquiring minds that want to know how this petite lady moved those boulders around the yard by myself here is the secret: I used a piece of U shaped rebar pounded deeply into the ground to maneuver (an inch at a time with the come-a-long) those big boulder into place as the base of the waterfall. The true desire to have a watergarden in my back yard was the sole motivating factor.

The pond was completed in the winter of 1996 and therefore the sod will have to be added around the edges when Spring arrives.

P.S. I left one huge boulder just to remind myself how big those rocks really were!

 

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