Continuing with my "Spring State of Mind" theme....... After years of planning and months of waiting, today is the day we begin the process of bringing new life to an old pond.
When my dad built this house circa 1966, he also had a beautiful pond built. It was nestled gently into the woods to provide a peaceful sanctuary for not just it's two-legged admires, but also for the many four-legged ones that lived deep in the woods and had no water source except the small streams that flowed down the mountain after it rained. But 45 years of neglect by mountain inhabitants, and the lack thereof, had turned the once beautiful pond into an overgrown and dangerous marsh. After a good hard rain, the now tiny containment area would hold only a double-carport-size pool of water which always drained through the root compromised outside bank and down onto our road. An eyesore and a hazard in the best possible description.
But today is the day that will all change. The bull dozer has arrived to begin the painstaking process of rediscovering my dad's original vision.
And as you can see from the photo below, this is not going to be easy. When you can barely see a giant bull dozer among the overgrowth, it is a pretty good indication this will be slow going. It has been suggested that it would be much easier to just start all over and put the pond elsewhere. But this is where my dad put it, and this is where it belongs.
So, please indulge me as I chronicle the process. And it will be a bitter-sweet one. I want so badly to retrieve my dad from the long-term care facility and bring him here to see that this thing he first built will have a new life again. But the danger of that outing combined with his severely altered state of mind will prevent that from ever happening. So, I guess just knowing this is the right thing to do will have to be good enough. Updates to come.........
When my dad built this house circa 1966, he also had a beautiful pond built. It was nestled gently into the woods to provide a peaceful sanctuary for not just it's two-legged admires, but also for the many four-legged ones that lived deep in the woods and had no water source except the small streams that flowed down the mountain after it rained. But 45 years of neglect by mountain inhabitants, and the lack thereof, had turned the once beautiful pond into an overgrown and dangerous marsh. After a good hard rain, the now tiny containment area would hold only a double-carport-size pool of water which always drained through the root compromised outside bank and down onto our road. An eyesore and a hazard in the best possible description.
But today is the day that will all change. The bull dozer has arrived to begin the painstaking process of rediscovering my dad's original vision.
And as you can see from the photo below, this is not going to be easy. When you can barely see a giant bull dozer among the overgrowth, it is a pretty good indication this will be slow going. It has been suggested that it would be much easier to just start all over and put the pond elsewhere. But this is where my dad put it, and this is where it belongs.
So, please indulge me as I chronicle the process. And it will be a bitter-sweet one. I want so badly to retrieve my dad from the long-term care facility and bring him here to see that this thing he first built will have a new life again. But the danger of that outing combined with his severely altered state of mind will prevent that from ever happening. So, I guess just knowing this is the right thing to do will have to be good enough. Updates to come.........
