Well today was the big day, we drained the pond, re lined it and started to re fill it. Simple as that? No it wasn’t, but with loads of us helping we got the job done.
Firstly we got our pump going and the water began to drop, but this soon slowed as it got progressively more and more clogged, even standing in the pond and continually cleaning it was no use in the end. Plenty of people with rakes cleaned the debris away but as we got lower the expected sludge caught up with us far sooner than I had predicted. The buckets came out and chains of muddy people got the sludge away, and cleaned the pond back to the original liner. We then lined the old liner with a protective layer and overlaid that with the new liner. In went some water to and all the frogs we had caught, then all of the buckets and containers of original pond water and minibeasts that Mrs Johnstone and her students had saved a few days ago. The plan now is to see if the Fire Brigade can lend a hand and re-fill it with non tap water.This will pull the liner into place, so in the meantime we weighed the edges down to keep the wind out.
Meanwhile there was plenty of other activity, the Ivy was being pulled off the trees, branches cut back and dragged off and out of the way. There was also plenty of soil turned over in the vegetable garden. Lots of hard work.
Here are some pictures from today.
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