During ............

 ......... and During.

Not the best quality photos but they are what they are (and they won't go large).

I can't really call it 'Before & After' as it's ongoing  -  last Saturday left, today on the right.   The lump of stuff you can just about see at the far end is the remnants of two large baskets of water lilies that have grown together and intertwined.   It was so heavy I couldn't move it at all (the sludge monster is holding on to the roots!).
Resourceful as ever, I found an old bread knife and started sawing lumps off it - it's about a fifth of the size it was and that monster is still holding on tight.  It will be gone in a couple of days.

I looked into renting a pump to get rid of all the water but found it was actually much the same price to buy one as to rent for a day.  Crazy!
Guess what?  I bought one and a cracking little pump it is too. Very impressed.   It took less than two hours to pump out all the water and then it couldn't cope with the gooey, gluey stuff at the bottom.  
What seems to be water in the rh photo is actually that very thick, smelly sludge - it's 11" (27.5cms) deep and my wellybobs are 13" (32.5cms) high - not a lot of leeway!!! 

That is all going to have to come out, laboriously, by hand, net and bucket and disposed of on the garden borders - am told it makes great fertilizer!  I'm loathe to use a sludge pump as there are a lot of frogs slopping about.

As some of you know, Himself's younger brother died on 25 September and Himself went up to spend the week with his Dad - so I've worked my little socks off trying to get the pond completely empty before he came back.
The weather was most definitely against me, though and there were days I sat in the rain and drizzle chopping up all the vegetation you see in the lh photo to go in our two garden wheelie bins.

Onward and ......... onward ....... and onward etc. etc. etc .......   

I am tagging this as a sillysaturday photo (in memory of Admirer) as the neighbours (if they could have seen me) would have thought I was very silly.  
Thanks to davidc for helping us remember her on the first Saturday of each month.

Smile for the Day (as if you haven't smiled enough at the thought of a crazy old lady sitting in the rain chopping up leaves and roots):

A garden is a thing of beauty and a job forever.




:o)


~ Anni ~


A 'mission' tomorrow and Monday but will try to stay on track with blipping!