pond project - recap

 Slow and steady wins the race.  ;)  

October 2022 

Where we started

Where we are 

December 2022

Where we started

     

       

October 2022

December 2022

 

Where we started

October 2022

Where we started

October 2022

                             

Where we started

Where we started 

October 2022

pond project - december 2022 adventures

I have always had big plans for my view of the pond.  My house sits up  on a small hill, and the deep southern porch is one of my favorite features.  When I moved in, there was no front yard, and the hill had grown up to the point you couldn't see the pond from my yard.  Over the past 11 (!!!) years, I have done some work to improve the view, but it turned out that my Dad's plans were even bigger....and dare I say it, more impactful.

Dad's plans called for heavy machinery, and he surprised me by bringing "Sally Sue" to my house.  Sally Sue is a combo Backhoe and Bulldozer, and I like to say that she built interstates in a previous life.  For the past few weeks, Sally Sue has been working and living at my house.  She has made easy work of removing dead trees from the pond and clearing around both the pond & my driveway.  She has dug new drainage ditches around the pond and fixed some major potholes in my driveway.  The brush piles are growing, and Sally Sue will be a big help when we burn.  

     

Blogger is a pain, but switching to a new platform is harder.  Captions would read: Before view from the porch, and after some clearing out by hand.

After working with Sally Sue

I still have quite a to do list for Sally Sue before she leaves... clearing more around the pond to improve the view, pre-digging some holes so I can amend the soil and plant hydrangeas this spring, transplanting magnolias & native bushes, planting some evergreens, and taking down some dead Oaks from around the property.  It's a lot of work, but very much worth it! 

new plants 2019 / 2020

SURPRISE! I bet you didn't expect to see me here again.  Spring is the time that I most miss my blog, and this year, after conversation with Dava (@davastewart), who I first met at a Chattanooga Blogger's meetup years ago, I got nostalgic.  I miss the blogging community and really getting to know people online in a way that doesn't translate on 'social media platforms'.  It's also really nice to be able to have an archive to dust the cobwebs of your memories.  I was nostalgic enough to say to myself, well, I do have a couple of things I could blog about....so let's see if I can do this again.   

My conversation with Dava got me thinking about 2 things I loved about blogging... being able to look back on how far my house/garden have come, and getting to know some of the amazing people in the blogging community.   I'm hoping to bring those both back into my life.  If the pandemic has taught me anything, its to put my needs first, and that good online relationships are just as nice as in person ones.

So even though this post is supposed to be about plants, I have to acknowledge 2020 as the year that will go down in history as quite the year.  I spent the spring dealing with the aftermath of a tornado and adjusting to pandemic life.   My mom had a hip replacement just before Covid, and my grandfather passed away in May at age 93.  As soon as I was ready to turn my attention outside to something normal  - maintenance and garden work.... I herniated 2 disks in my neck.  Plans were interrupted, and much of the heavy garden work was put on hold.  I picked up a few houseplants, and started propagating some of my grandmother's houseplants (mistletoe cactus and spider plant, both 40+ years old), but that was it.  

The biggest project was a May 2020 unplanned mowing of the underbrush in my front yard.  It more than doubled the size of my front yard, and makes me anxious to complete my dream project of being able to see the whole pond from my front porch. 

Looking back past 2020 to 2019 is hard.  2019 a blurry and distant memory.  I can't remember much of what I planted.  I know I was gifted a peony by my sister that bloomed from a large pot on my front porch this year.   My Instagram tells me that 2019 was a maintenance year. I cut back ivy and laid pine needles on the front steps to the pond, mulched, pressure washed, and cut back "volunteer" bushes.   It's nice to look back and see how nice it looked, but it's crazy to see how quickly things grow back after even one year off.  2019 was also the year I re-discovered embroidery.....more on that another day.    😊

New plants 2019/2020

• Peony, from my sister
• Mistletoe Cactus, cuttings from Grandmother
• Spider plant, cuttings from Grandmother
• Baby Jade
• Mini Orchid
• Wandering Jew, from Clemson
• Ponytail Palm
• Monstera, from my sister
• Snake Plants, from Clemson

#pondproject - frozen

Just a little photo to document the freeze.  I'd say this is day 5 of the pond being frozen?  It got above freezing for a few hours, but otherwise, it has been in the teens and 20s.  I was out of town when the pond froze, but the water must have been very still, because it's almost like glass. The shallow end of the pond is frozen to the bottom, about a foot deep! 

Close up of the reflections of the trees in the ice.  This quite possibly will end up at the background on my phone.

I hate the cold, but at least it's pretty! 

#pondproject - bye bye bushes - unposted 2017 Draft

A blog post from 2012 came up on my memories today, which lead me to looking at my desolate blog, which lead me to thinking about posting at 2017 Garden Summary, or at least a picture, which lead me to this un-posted draft from last year.  I'm guessing it's from around this time last year, because it's been a LONG time since my blog has been on my mind.   Maybe you'll see me back here more in 2018, maybe you won't.  I do know I was more active in my yard when I was blogging, so I have that going for me.

Anywho, I hope anyone who see's this is doing well!

~Emily
It only took 5 months, but the my brush piles are gone! I started the pond project this year because here in Tennessee, we were going through what I thought was a bit of a drought, and the pond was down.  This meant I could drive my tahoe up to the bushes, wrap my brush puller around them, and pull them out without worrying about getting my car stuck. You can't do this every year, but the pond was low enough 4 years ago that we had done this before.  I didn't think twice about piling my brush in a giant pile by the driveway where it was safe to burn.

And then it didn't rain....for months.  We were under a Governor's Burn Ban for most of the fall due to the very real risk of wildfires.  There were weeks where the smoke settled in the Tennessee Valley.  The pond dropped to the lowest point anyone in my family can remember, and my grandmother is in her 90's!  So as the pond continued to go down, we continued to work, and we made another bush pile.

Finally, it rained enough to lift the burn ban, and we had a New Year's Eve, all day, bonfire!

I hate that everything is so grey right now, and the pond is still super low, but here are some before and after pictures of the bushes we cleared.  I'll take more pictures in the spring when the leaves are on the trees, but this is a start!

There is still more work to do around the pond, and in the woods, but the view from my porch has really improved.  I've just got to keep reminding myself that slow and steady wins the race!!

#pondproject - updated

Hey everybody.  I haven't completely dropped off the face of the earth.  Its been too hot to do much in the yard this summer, but the drought has dropped the water table, and the low water level is providing a rare opportunity to do some work around my pond.

Fall 2013 - you can see the ball willows lining the pond.

My pond is spring fed, and on a good day, it's about 2 acres.  For the past 30 or so years, the family has kept everything about and around the pond natural... and as you can see, it's grown up quite a bit.  I've heard stories of my dad mowing around the pond (can you imagine!), and 4th of July fireworks being set off by the pond and viewed from the house on the hill.  When I moved in, you could barely see the pond from the porch.  My porch is one of my favorite parts of my house, and I'd love to be able to see the whole pond from the porch.  That means clearing about half of the willows growing around the pond, and leaving the rest for privacy.  That's the goal.  I'm playing the long game.

When I first moved into the house, my mom and I did some major clearing of the underbrush between the house and the pond.  We were also in a bit of a drought, so my dad and I pulled up a section of the ball willow bushes growing in almost a full circle around the edge of the pond.  It was a lot of work, and resulted in being able to see almost half the pond from the porch.  It's a HUGE improvement.

Spring 2014 - post #pondproject part one

Getting caught up to now, you can still see about half the pond from the porch, but the underbrush is starting to grow up again, and watershields have almost taken over the pond.  So you don't see water, you just see the green watershields.  We don't know where they came from, but it only took 3 years to go from none, to takeover.  It's time to get to work.

The first step is getting rid of the watershields.  We looked into a natural solution, but watershields are slimy, rooted plants that 1) aren't very tasty to fish, 2) we couldn't pull them all up by hand if we tried, and 3) we were worried what that would do to the bottom of our spring fed pond.  The last thing we wanted to do was mess with the spring.  So, we looked into granular and liquid herbicides, and found a liquid that is supposed to work well this time of year and also be safe for the fish.  Some friends of the family sprayed on Thursday (9/1), and my fingers are crossed.  If everything goes as planned, the watershields should start dying off in a few weeks.

My project for this weekend is clearing underbrush in the woods, and the grasses/weeds growing around the pond where we've cleared the bushes before.   

Sunday's part of the project was clearing the underbrush in the woods between the house and the pond, where mom and I had worked before.  It wasn't as bad as the first time, but I'll still have blisters from working the lopping sheers.  There's still more to do, but this is a project you just have to take one bite at a time. 

Monday's project is working with the DR, assuming it starts, and doing as much damage as I can.  I need clear paths to the willows, so that next weekend we can pull up as many bushes as humanly possible...ie until the heat wins.  The problem is there are a number of full grown trees around the pond, as well as some wild azaelas and small dogwoods I'd love to preserve, so getting my tahoe in position could prove tricky in spots.  So the more I can do tomorrow, the easier next weekend will be.   

Next week is the fun part, pulling up the ball willow bushes with my tahoe.  The ground is dry and crunchy, so I'm not at all worried about getting stuck driving on parts of the pond that are normally under water.  I am horrible with scale, but I'll guess the goal for next weekend is clearing between 50 and 100 yards of shoreline.  I think that should get enough to see most of the pond from the porch... if more underbrush is clear, and the trees are limbed up properly.  There's probably another chain saw day in my future,  but that can wait until the weather cools off.

Needless to say, the #pondproject is huge, but so is the pond.  It took a long time for it to get this way, so I'm not expecting to restore it to it's former glory overnight. 

*Note, I'll fill in the pictures and video soon, but my iphone and chromebook don't play well together.  I'm impressed I got this much posted, tbh.