Thank goodness it stays light in Minnesota until 9:30 or so in the summer. My pond digger has time to work on the pond a little bit after dinner. Tonight’s project was to shore up the walls of the equipment pit. Over the weekend he dug it back and poured some concrete to stabilize the dirt. While he was planning on doing the walls as well, it was a really hot day and he ran out of time. In the evening we had some pretty heavy thunderstorms that poured buckets of rain and fresh dirt into the equipment pit. Our little sump pump could not keep up and I woke up to a silent waterfall. He had the equipment up and running before work and today was a relatively dry day.

He also knows that the bare dirt has been driving me crazy so he picked up some rolls of instant gratification – fresh sod 🙂 He rolled it out over much of the dirt areas that have graced the area since early April. We also put in a little hosta garden since these plants grow like weeds around the yard. They are quite tolerant of abuse and will be easy to move if we need the space for the deck.

I think we go to Home Depot (a home improvement store) almost as much as the grocery store, maybe more! This weekend I noticed a sale of spring flowering bushes that were 75% off. I picked up two pussy willows and three azaleas for about $7.00 each – cheaper than many annual plants. While the azalea is not my favorite flower, it is found in many Japanese style gardens and they can be quite colorful. I had planned on putting them in the new garden by the lower pond but the azaleas and a japanese grass ended up near the equipment pit.

So lots of progress being made on the landscaping front. Here’s a comparison of the area – 5 or 6 weeks ago on the left, yesterday on the right:

The ponds attract a lot of birds. I’m not a big fan of them taking baths in the stream and hope that they aren’t bringing in too many parasites to the pond. Last night while I was weeding around the pond, I heard an incessant chirping and it turned out to be a little black capped chickadee fledgling. It was able to flit from branch to branch but unable to fly away. Of course this made it pretty easy to take a close up photo.

Another weekend of koi pond work done…tomorrow I’ll be expecting a FEDEX overnight delivery — my new shiro utsuri 🙂