Interactive fountain

The evolution of this fountain, which is under the kitchen and next to the steps leading to our front door has been an interesting one. We didn't like it much when we bought the house and thought it would probably be one of the first things to go, except that getting rid of it was much easier said than done, and there were more pressing things to be done inside the house. Besides, the birds love it, and I love watching the birds really getting into their baths under the running water.

Still...it was pretty stark looking, only slightly softened by the round cement balls which we lugged from our Berkeley garden in a driving rainstorm and dumped there because it was close to the garage. We decided we liked the concept and so they stayed, although they have moved around several times over the ensuing four years. 

Frequent visitors began adding their own touches. Peter stacked the river stones on top of the pillar with the water, ultimately realizing that if he arranged them carefully over the water pipe he could get the water to tumble over the stone with an authentic fountain sound.

I don't know who added the Raiders football, but I'm guessing it might have been Owen.

The agaves planted behind the fountain next to the house presented a challenge to the poor plumber when we had some sort of plumbing disaster , since access to the pipes was behind them. Eventually we decided we had far too many agaves and we took them out, replacing them with flowery grevillea banksii.

Every time I looked out the kitchen window I would think how much nicer  the fountain would look if we got rid of the rocks and had it actually flow into a pond...with papyrus plants in it.  We even found some nice dwarf papyrus in a pond nursery, but then OilMan felt that he needed to remove the rocks, check out the pump and redo it before we got the plants, and as I predicted, by the time all that was accomplished, they no longer had any dwarf papyrus.

While we waited for them to get grow more , more things began to appear in the newly revealed pond...a large flat stone to cover the pump, was found elsewhere in our garden. Two turtles (plastic) appeared courtesy of OilMan who bought them at Oliver's (the grocery store!)  Dana added a number of little ceramic koi, and we finally got a call from the pond nursery that they were holding some dwarf papyrus for us.

I think they were the perfect touch, but probably not the final one....