The Hole-A Pond Story part Seven

Stacy Pulls A Pond and other acts of insanity. 

This occurred Nov 10, 2011, sharing it now.

Today's weather: Cold 30 degrees, windy, rainy, yucky, blechy, blah
Today's mission: Remove 2398472 wet leaves from pond and net it at last
Today's plan: Buy cabana boy pool skimmer thing. Put on rubber garden boots. Remove leaves. Net pond.

Work took me to New York this week. Got back last night. Unfortunately the pond netting didn't get delivered before I left and while I was gone we had another major wind storm and a whole lot of rain. Good news is pond is holding water! Bad news is that pond is holding leaves.   Lots and lots of them. It is also thirty degrees out there right now, which means leaf removal is going to be chilly business!

The pond cover netting came while I was gone. Today's plan was to get the leaves out, get the netting up and fix the liner that started to fall in. Tick tock tick tock, not much time left. Had flakes flying last night! I need to make this quick because I am a popsicle and need to defrost with a shower. I spent $25 on the cabana boy pool skimmer thing and it was money wasted.  It was was taking forever to get the leaves out and I was freezing.  It was so flat, the leaves kept drifting off the top, my cute rubber boots were not tall enough, got a bit of water in them... you get the picture. Also, it was really really cold out.

I needed a new plan. My second plan was to try and mimic what I saw on a koi forum when they all capture the koi by dragging a giant net thru the water. I would use my shiny new 15x20 foot net and drag it thru the water and capture all the leaves at once. FAIL.  Unfortunately I forgot that they do it with a dozen or so people holding the netting, in water that is a few degrees warmer than freezing. This didn't work solo. Though no doubt the neighbors probably enjoyed the production.

Oh Yay snow.  Fan-frickentastic.

Right around this time it started snowing. Charming little flakes which would have been exciting if I wasn't so cold. At this point I exited the pond grabbed my cabana boy pool thing and tried to get the net to stop being so floaty. Didn't work. (Duh)

Then I had a mini-tantrum where I started whacking at it in frustration. This caused a brick that was on the edge of the pond to fall into the water, onto the net, weighting down the edge. Hey now, this could work! I started sort of stirring the water, guiding the leaves to the net and because one edge was down and the annoying floaty edge stayed up, I was able to create a current by pulling the water one way. This worked brilliantly, the leaves came up off the bottom, but got stuck in the net. I had most of them netted in about twenty minutes. I was pretty cool how great it actually worked. It had also stopped snowing. Things were looking up. I just had to get this massive net now filled with bazillions of wet heavy leaves out of the pond.

Got pretty well soaked doing that. Now actively shivering but almost done!

I started getting the net across the pond for final placement. This was harder than it should have been primarily because I should have bought a bigger net. If I pulled too hard on one side, the net edge fell in the water, and I had to get in the water AGAIN to fish it out. Eventually I figured out it was impossible for one person to get this done before hypothermia set in.  (I was actively shivering at this point.   Luckily the school bus arrived and I could recruit a munchkin to assist. Munchkins wanting stuff are easy to recruit. My munchkin was hoping for some new tunes We got it placed in about five minutes and weighted down with bricks . I immediately realized the bricks would never hold. Too many leaves. I went searching for stakes and string. Settled for 16 gauge electrical wire and chunks of wood. Wrapping wire is easier than tying knots when fingers are icy and painfully numb.

Yes, those are some leaves still under the net.  *Grumble*

Unfortunately by this time it has started sleeting. Giant chunks of icy fun. Pretty darn sucky. <--{PC version of what I really mean}. I got about six stakes in and decided to call it quits for today. The final straw was after moving a bit of tarp I was almost killed by nuclear spider. He is clearly freakish and dangerous because spiders aren't supposed to be alive when it is snowing and he was very much alive, waving his hairy legs around like that. He could be a brown recluse, which you definitely don't want a bite from. Particularly if he is nuclear.

Nuclear Spider

If you don't hear from me for awhile it is either because I have pneumonia, my husband has had me committed for insanity, or nuclear spider got me.

February 28th, 2012
The above is where I left it last fall.  At one point I had to remove the netting because we had a big snowstorm and I didn't want the snow to rip it.  Now the ice is covered with lots of leaves that I need to clear off before the thaw.  Hopefully today.  This is what the unfinished pond has looked like all winter.