A Thing Of Beauty

The two jobs I wanted to do on my days off were to change the Turtle pond liner for the new Mayfly 250 litre one, and to put up my greenhouse. I have done one of the jobs, but had to abort the second due to losing the instructions on the greenhouse!
The first stage of the first job was to dig a hole big enough to accommodate the new pond liner..

This photo shows how much soil I had to dig. The two rectangular potato grow bags were full of soil, and five 75 litre compost bags were full as well. Two hundred and fifty litres was a lot of soil to remove to fit the pond liner into. I wanted the top of the pond level with the soil. This took around two hours to shovel a hole that I could stand in.

I played around with the direction the pond liner sat in. The original builders of the house left a sandy/stony mix beneath the soil. This was a partially dug hole with the liner sat telling me how much deeper i needed to dig.

Once the hole was dug deep enough for the top to rest at the soil surface I had to back fill the hole around the liner. This exerted some wonderful pressure on the liner. It has some new twisty edges now around the pond top.

I put the top soil back onto the edge of the pond. I split the green grasses into smaller clumps, and planted the Carex, Astilbe, and Bergenia around the pond.
Cat helped me fill the pond with water in a filling ceremony. The oxygenator plants were put onto shelves under the water. I placed Bricks so the birds can drink and bathe on the pond side.
My Flag Iris has moved into the deep end of the pond on bricks. Finally I sowed some Wildflower mix around the soil, and scattered some dark Poppie seeds.
A robin flew in to drink two minutes after this photo was taken to show his approval.
I saved two milk cartons full of old pond water (with all the beasties in it). This was added to the new pond water today. I hope that it will attract Frogs and Dragonflies this year.
The greenhouse needs instructions. It has hundreds of metal bars and connectors. I cannot remember how the top sections are put together.
The Greenhouse has a new cover that we ordered as the old one ripped in the wind. I thought we would use the plastic covered walk in greenhouse this year until we were organised to lay a concrete base for a permanent glass greenhouse.
I had to take it to bits again, to wait for either my old instructions or for new ones. The pond is a thing of beauty. I hope that the plants will grow, and my wildflowers germinate.