#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.