My other summer project.

This is my garage guest apartment. Open to any and all who care to visit. But be warned. I now have a permanent resident sharing the space. It is a long sad story about how I came to possess another kitty and I won't go into it here. But this is Finn, the surviving kitten from a pair that I rescued this summer. He can't come in and live in the house cause of all the dynamics of the animals that already live inside. But he does very well out here by himself. He spends lots of time playing with his toys, watching the wildlife out the window and relishing every minute that I come out to spend with him. He is a great kitty and I wish I could do better by him. But at least he is no longer living up a tree and now has some meat on that skeleton that I rescued a few months ago.

We call this Finn Land! He loves climbing on this and sleeping in the very soft bed. I plan on adding some more pieces to it as I find them. There is a tunnel and he needs another climbing wall to get up to the corner hidey hole at the top.

Here he is, probably watching the chickens. One time I let him out and he chased the biggest rooster. He is quite a brave little guy.

This was probably about a week after I took him in. He has already fattened up considerably. He was really nothing but skin and bones when we found him.

This is his mean face!!! But really he has a very sweet disposition.

So now, this is my new fish pond. In the walled garden behind the guest apartment. I dug it entirely by hand, moving the buckets of dirt way across the yard to fill in low spots elsewhere. I estimate it to be about 300+ gallons. Which is a lot of dirt. I would have loved a bigger deeper pond. But those 300 gallons of dirt about did me in.
Somehow I did not end up with any pics of the pond during the in between stages. No laying of the liner, no pics without the edges sticking out. In other words, you get to miss the ugly stage completely. I don't miss it at all.

This is some of the pretties that I have to make the pond even nicer. These statues are not your run of the mill Hobby Lobby ones. They are real art work. And not horribly expensive. I bought both pieces so far on sale and even with shipping were under $100.00 each. And I have a spitter coming that will match these and it was under $50.00
Right now I have a fountain going off the pump to help aerate the water. I have since changed out the fountain head to a bubbler cause when the wind blew it almost emptied the pond over the course of 2 days. The bubbler does not blow as much and still provides the oxygen the fish need to survive.
The plants are ones I just quick bought to help green up the pond and help hide the rough edges of the "manmade"pond. When I brought them home it was horribly hot and I just plunked them in the water expecting them to acclimate wonderfully. Not so. Several did suffer in the hot sun. But they have all recovered fairly well and are slowly growing. Most are perennial but at least 2 are annual. The water lily came from Ken's cousin Sheila in Ohio. She has gorgeous fish ponds of her own that I hope to visit some day.
In these pics everything looks one color. Beige. But with the flower beds surrounding the pond, there is actually quite a bit of color. And now the fish are finally comfortable in the pond and we see glimpses of orange and white all the time. I am not going with Koi. This pond is a bit small. I went with pond variety goldfish that are sturdy and won't get quite so large even after many years. So far we have not had any predator issues and even Holly doesn't seem to bother the fish when she sees them.

I still have a bit of work to do on the edges of the pond. One end is still a little low compared to the rest. And I need to take out the rocks and build it up to match. Then i should be able to fill the pond more and not let the upper liner show so much. The plantings need to be worked on next year. More and different plants are in order. I have been doing pretty well with the balance of the pond so far. I did have some string algae issues but got that quickly under control. next year I may add some trap door snails which are known for keeping the algae down pretty well. I did have a frog move into the pond area almost immediately. And i know for sure that we had at least 1 if not 2 batches of tadpoles mature and turn into frogs themselves because of my pond habitat!! That did make me a bit proud.

I would love to someday have even a bigger pond out front of the house. But unless I can get a backhoe to dig it out for me, it ain't gonna happen any time soon!!