I just had my pond relined and the fixed up in general; it was looking very sad. The pros came in and did a wonderful job this week and everything is working better than it ever did.

It was a do-it-yourself job originally, and my pond building skills didn’t quite hold up to the test of time.

But, hey, it was very satisfying, at least until it started to leak, molder, fall apart, etc.

But the funny part is after the Pond Guys were gone, I had several buckets of Japanese iris and other divisions left over that I couldn’t bear to toss on the compost. I also had handy an old horse trough, a small pump, some bags of gravel, and an empty space next to the deck. Voila, a little watergarden I could call my own. At one end I put a pile of rocks and a cinderblock (with the holes facing up so I could plant them), with a beautiful ceramic leaf plate made by my friend Kiki placed so that water would pour out of a small, olive green terra cotta jar (the plastic tube goes through the back and is hidden in the rocks) into it and from there back into the trough.

Yes, it needs the edges concealed, but overall it’s not too bad. One thing I did was to put an inch of garden dirt in the bottom, covered with gravel and planted directly into. When I filled it with water I was horrified by how dirty the water instantly became. But two days later the dirt’s settled and the water is clear. I’ll post more as it develops, but it was really easy to do. And as beautiful as the big pond is, my little deckside watergarden is just a wee bit more satisfying on a personal level- it’s got that good old “do it yourself” thing going for it that I’m such a sucker for.