When we bought our home back in 2013, we knew that we would have a SMALL back yard and an equally small front yard. It was agreed by myself and Alex that he would be the one to take on management of said pieces of land. In my wildest dreams, it did not occur to me that taking care of a 8 meter x 15 meter piece of land in the back and a 6 meter x 15 meter piece of land in the front would require SOOOOO much work, time, and money!
This is what the front looked like
This is what it looks like now
The biggest change was putting a new bed of gravel down and installing some garden beds around the perimter of the front. It is somewhat low maintenance.
The biggest changes have happened in the back. These wer taken in 2013
This is what it looks like now
We also installed a pond . It has undergone a number of incarnations since the first one we put in. Last week, however, tragedy struck! We covered the larger of the ponds with a fencing material to keep the urban raccoons out. We did not, however, cover the smaller pond that fed into it well enough. They got in and killed about 1/3 of our stock of goldfish. The carnage was horrific! Half eaten corpses littered the yard.
So, after burying the dead, we got to work. It was time to fix the pond and make it safer, more functional and prettier. We bought a new filtration system, new water pumps, pond liner and hoses.
We decided that we wanted a small stream to feed into the ponds and so that is what we did. Alex did most of the work and I happily admit that he knew what we was doing and in less than a week, we had a stream running into the ponds.
We then got to work on the ponds themselves. We adjust the enclosure on the big pond, added new plants and large rocks to hold the enclosure in place.
Alex then added another screen enclosure on the small pond to secure it. You can see the stream feeding into it. You can see at the bottom of the picture, our new heavy duty filtration system. It has cleared up the water in three days!
He then replanted the small area just beside the small pond. You will notice at the top of this picture a rectangular box – that is a motion sensor that puts out a variety of flashing lights and sounds which will, hopefully, scare off any future attempts to attack our pond.
I am still going to put a small table and chair there to have a zen space. I will just need to make sure that I turn off the alarm when sitting there and to turn it on when I leave.
Al Zylstra 