The pond builder was finally seeing the home stretch of this summer’s project. The pond had been filled with water and it was time to get all the equipment up and running.

Unfortunately he saw that the RDF was leaking somewhere. He called Mike Swanson of Koi Acres to talk about options. Having Taylor weld the plastic seemed like the best option. Luckily we caught them before they left for a pond building project. We loaded the RDF up and took a drive out. It’s pretty nice of them to take care of us on a Sunday afternoon. The repair was looking good and then they tested out the RDF with water. Really big sad face. The welding was fine but Mike noticed some cracks in the base of the shell.

So we talked about options and we just needed to get moving on pond completion. It was adios to the old RDF and a new RDF was loaded on to our truck. We also picked up a new measuring tank, a box of SuperTab (I’ll let you know how this works when we try it) and a cool new pump called FlowFriend. This pump is supposedly very energy efficient, quiet and totally interesting to the pond builder. I think it’s European and pricey.

The pond builder set up the RDF and will continue to do more work this week.

I have been busy gardening around the pond to get it back together. I basically find lots of plants around the yard that can be placed back into areas. On this spot, I harvested some moss and placed them in between rocks and under plants. This portion of the garden will look very green next year.

Aside from pond work and keeping koi – I have been accepted as a student judge in the American Koi Judges Association. I had the pleasure of attending their annual seminar which included presentations from candidate judges, judging exercises and just a lot of koi talk. I hope I am able to meet their standards and pass my certification test in three to four years. In addition to being really smart about koi, they’re a pretty fun bunch to just hang out with socially. I’ll write more about this in a different post.

On a personal note, my pond builder’s father passed away yesterday surrounded by family. It has been difficult to work on the pond this summer since the pond builder needed to be with his father a little more often the last few months. I often think my pond builder is crazy building and redoing the ponds but like his father, he enjoys the process and wants to always do a good job. Dad has always admired his son’s pond work – I hope he can see our backyard from Heaven.