I've been crazy busy this last week, let me tell you! I got a new liner on trade (thanks Glenda!) that was quite large, so I took down my old 5'x6' 500g. pond and made it bigger! It's now an irregular 10'x10', and nearly 1000g. It's much different than it looked at the beginning of the season:

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Earlier this year my pump died, so I got a new, much more powerful one, and built a new waterfall:

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Then I started to dig out a new hole, thinking the liner I was getting was much smaller. I had an idea to join the two liners together to make a wonky W shape. This was Monday:

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On Tuesday, I waited inside for the liner to come. When it did, I was very surprised to see it was much much larger than expected! I took down the old pond and started redigging and reshaping the hole. This time, I put in plant shelves since I hadn't thought of them last time and always regretted it.

On Wednesday, I was able to finish the hole, get it prepped with underlay and put the liner in. That's when it started to rain:

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Thursday was still really rainy, but I managed to set in the stones and install the pump. I did have a mishap when the pump wouldn't run, so I had to bring it in, clean it up and got it running again by nudging the propellor. It was only locked up.

On Friday, I tidied up and got everything ready for replanting. I returned my neighbors wheelbarrel, and made a little bench out of some left over planks of wood and some branches and limbs from the woods:

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And here it is today! Sorry it looks like a mudhole, the rain and rebuilding got the water really dirty. I'm not sure how long it will take for the dirt to settle.

I got most of my plants out of the woods near my house. This morning I set out with a bucket and shovel. Too bad in the photos, you can't really see the cattails and bullrushes I got, but I was happy to find them! I took care to only take a little of all the plants I got and still leave plenty behind.

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I thought the kids needed a path to get to the bench I made them. I planted this with mimosa, but it's not looking too well. I may have to get a packet of seed or something:

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Here's the bench I made:

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Some plants from the old landscaping are still coming up, like this rubharb:

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And Hostas. I've got lots and lots of these things:

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I planted some Ivy all around the back of the waterfall, so the tendrils can snake along the rocks and fill in the dirth patch:

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I planted several of these bushes around the pond. They're quite invasive so I lined the holes with weed barrier to keep the roots from traveling too far and sending up new shoots everywhere:

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Rebuilding the pond not only made the pond itself bigger, it took care of a really big problem I'd been having. I'd been getting a lot of rain runoff from the street and front yard, and while it couldn't get into the pond it dropped a lot of sediment in the surrounding area, making it next to impossible for anything to grow there. I built a short wall out of the same type of stone that's used for the pond, and used the dirt from the new hole to fill it in. I sloped it to filter the water into the existing dip in the yard where it makes its way to the creek:

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Sorry for being so long, it's been a long week. But now there's nothing to do but relax, wait for the water to settle and let it all grow in! :-D