Thanks for all your nice comments. I posted the rest of the pics of the pond in a separate post, as Im not sure if its ok that posts have too many pics on here? Horton, Im so proud to be rewarded an OPN! Im still reading my way through all the old posts on here in between ponding, and Ive already read enough to know that the OPN is an honour :-D Thanks Frogman, for reminding me to pack down the berm. By the time I laid down the liner I had stepped so much around in that bed, that I had a hard time making holes for plants afterwards :-D Lisa, Im very lucky to live in a country full of rocks. We have lots of farmland and every year when the farmers plow they have to remove hundreds of these round rocks, we call them field-rocks. So most of them give them away for free, just to get rid of them. We did pick most of ours up from a query not far from here. You can fill a trailer with as many as you like and pay $10. Amazing, eh? Pondbucket, I like to think of my garden as a cottage-style garden, thatÂs why I wanted as much planting as possible around the pond. I was really lucky with the lawn edges, as I had been a bit lazy and hadnt edged my lawn up to the slabs I removed for the pond. So the grass had grown way in over the slabs, and I just took those pieces of turf and laid over the edge of the pond. Ive already begun eyeing a setting for a bigger pond some day. Now that I got the goldies, and learned that they wont stay tiny, I cant keep them in this tiny one forever :-D My husband insists that we keep this one too though :-) Take care, Hanne in Denmark Here is a link that might be useful: My very first pond Part 2

Thank you all for your kind comments. We built the ponds over a weekend mid June digging the holes on Saturday and inserting the liners and smoothing out the dirt on Sunday. I actually waited a week and 2 days before adding any fish. We live on Long Island, no raccoon here but I saw an opossums twice in my yard about 5 years ago, but the most dangerous predator here are cats (one likes to drink every morning in a fountain we have). Thanks for reinforcing the "wait and see" strategy. I have about a third of the water coveren in lettuce now, will probably get some more next trip to the garden place. On a happy note when I checked the pond this morning the boys were schooled up at the far end looking for food on the surface. They seemed happy and healthy, and I did get to see Nemo and Goldie (the two Kois).

Hanne, Your garden is so lush and lovely. Very, very lovely! What a beautiful setting for a pond. Thanks much for sharing your photos with us. I'm drooling with envy at all of your beautiful flowers. Beth, who lives in arid Utah :)

Hey there, Deborah. I still have no ice on my pond and it is two weeks since you posted last. Your weather leads ours so maybe your water has frozen since then. I thought I would add a comment or two. The Barley straw ball is not going to do anything to keep the ice open. It will just freeze in place. The tennis balls might work but I always found them on the bottom after they broke open and sank at the first hard freeze that lasted long enough to close the ice. They hold up just fine when you are hitting them around in hot weather but cold makes them brittle. You need something that can be compressed like an inflatable pillow tethered to the bottom so it stays in place. Ping pong balls work if you don't mind the dents that appear. You need to confine them to a small space so there is not a lot of water between them.If the ice gets thicker than the diameter of the ping pong ball the hole will close up anyway. I tried to keep a pond the same size as yours open all winter with a heater and wound up with a heavy frost layer on everything around the pond. It looked like the worlds heaviest fog. I wound up removing the fish on Christmas day. What a mess. I kept the fish in the garage in the winter after that until I could dig a bigger pond a couple of years later. Horton's wood cover sounds like it could be a lot safer than a plastic sheet. The potential problem I see would be if the wind could lift it up. A cement block would solve that problem. There have been a number of threads on keeping the frogs alive during the winter. Lots of failures too. I haven't tried because frogs don't manage to get to my pond. However, after reading many threads on the subject I think I can suggest a solution to the problem in the future. By the way, this is not my solution, it is suggested by someone else who has a web site elsewhere. I just can't remember where it is. An area close to the pond should have a hole dug 12 to 18 inches deep that is backfilled with loose compost or chopped dried leaves or even sand. The frogs will go to the bottom of this backfill and hibernate until spring. Material such as quilt batting can strangle or suffocate the froggie as it shifts around. Otherwise, if you have a properly maintained garden area, the frog will be just as happy there since it would be easy to dig itself in. Freezing does not harm a frog. They produce their own anti-freeze. They are killed by dehydration. I once found the dissicated remains of three frogs who made the mistake of using a bag of lime in which to hibernate. I have also found a seemingly dead frog in the bottom of a ball of soil in a flower pot that broke. I left the ball of dirt in the sun frog side down and as it thawed the frog thawed too. It found a new spot to dig in since the soil scattered. In a deeper pond they would be safe in a bucket or pot of sand or clay such as you would use for a water lily. Sandy