The new pond lady...

...is me!

This year we decided not to wait for our pond lady and ambitiously took on the task of opening the pond ourselves. It was a big job. We worked on the upper pond on Saturday and tonight we finished cleaning the lower pond where the fish live. Now the water is slowly filling and if all goes well, we will turn on the pumps tomorrow. Hopefully everything works properly so that by afternoon the waterfall will be flowing and the fish will have nice clean circulating water. 

The cleaning process was very messy as the dirt and algae that had accumulated since last fall had to be pressure washed off the rocks that line the pond walls and bottom. A lot of muck was stirred up and even though we kept adding fresh water as we pumped out the gunk, the poor fish had a rough go of it. Before everything was clean and the pond could be refilled, there was only a very small amount of gunky soupy water left for the fish at the bottom of the pond. I am sure the fish were quite relieved when the cleaning was over and I think they are happy with the fresh water that is now filling their pond.

It was a long and hard day. Work on the pond started before noon and I finally jumped in the shower at 11:00pm. Afterwards, I came downstairs to find Justin fast asleep on the kitchen floor with his arm around Buddy. It looked like he had fallen asleep petting him. Kevin helped, too. 

The dogs had a pretty easy day, alternating playing and sleeping, while we worked. Every so often, Leroy would climb right down into the pond to see how we were doing. Cute little puppy :)