I’m the first person who likes the rain since it makes everything so green in Minnesota. It would be nice though if it would rain during the week and be sunny on the weekend, particularly this Memorial Day weekend. We have been wanting to get to the lower pond and working outside in the rain is not fun. However, my wonderful pond digger is not deterred by a few drops and has been busy installing another RDF (rotary drum filter). We were not planning on this RDF but the low-to-no maintenance we’re experiencing on the upper pond makes it worth it.

            

I’ve been busy repainting the ornamental bridges for the lower pond. They were originally a barn red color but I’ve given them a more orangey tone this year. We really liked the natural cedar tone the upper pond bridge was stained and this is a close as I can get right now to blend the colors. I could sand the bridges (which I did try for about 30 minutes) – but even with a power sander, it would take forever. All said, I’m satisfied with the results:

             

As for the waterfall – we decided to rip up the lower portion, take out the riverjacks and boulders, replace with pea gravel. We also reset the waterfall stone with some concrete work the other night since I was always worried it could fall into the pond if someone steps on it the wrong way. Pond digger is really into concrete work now and hammered some rebar into the dirt for good measure. We’ll be working more on the pond tomorrow and hopefully it will be less rainy. Accuweather is predicting morning thunderstorms and then just cloudy weather in the afternoon.

Now that the upper pond is running, it has entered its “green pond” stage. It drives us crazy because the water clarity is zip. We have hooked up a little extra filtration for now and added some more bacteria. Last year we went away for a few days and when we returned home, the pond had cleared itself up. Between looking green and the stuff falling out of the trees with the rainy weather, the pond is not too pretty. The only good thing is that the water parameters test okay. I guess we’ll have to exercise some patience. Hopefully I will be posting a little video of the lower pond with koi tomorrow!