We dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig...

This is my new pond. It is quite small, although it's as big as it possibly can be given the size of my gravel patch, and has cost an inordinate amount of effort.

I've been wanting a pond ever since my first attempt at landscaping - the rockery - two years ago, and experimented with a miniature water feature (old roasting tin recessed into the gravel, pretty stones and a couple of ferns round it) but wasn't content with that and have been looking for a nice small deep preformed pond for ages. Finally found one on the internet, it came last Tuesday and I've been digging more or less ever since.

I knew that there was heavy duty plastic under the gravel, and that under that there was red clay, because I got down that far when siting the compost bin, but what I didn't realise that under a couple of inches of clay there was solid slate. Should have done really, in hindsight, there's slate everywhere else... What's worse, about three inches down alongside the wall where I started digging there was also quite a thick layer of concrete extending about a foot from the edge. With my little trowel and Ron's entrenching tool I made quite good progress for the first eight inches or so down from the surface as the slate was fairly loose but the last few inches (pond is just over a foot deep) was really, really, hard. And I couldn't do anything about the concrete at all - it's got a lot of granite in it and was causing sparks to fly every time I hit it feebly with the digger. Ron sorted it, though. In about ten minutes with the big sledgehammer then the small sledgehammer and a big chisel he made more hole than I had in two days, and left me with just the finishing off.

It's in now, bedded in with nice soft compost, ferns replaced and a few muscari bulbs and other bits stuck in here and there. Almost empty still, of course; I keep looking out at the clouds and hoping it will rain. I've got lots of buckets and bowls strategically placed to catch as much water as possible, as well.

I want it to be a proper wildlife pond, and internet research suggests that the very best way to do this is to leave it to be colonised naturally - just fill with rainwater and wait for stuff to arrive. I don't think I have quite that long to live, though, so I may have to help it a bit. Come the spring I shall probably be stealing frogspawn from somewhere...