Home Ideazz: Working Outside and Plans for Pond

I am still on a working outside kick as far as the home renovations are going. The rainy weather I like to work indoors and the nice weather outdoors. I don't think there is many that would opt for the yard work in the rain. The weekend went fast and its back in to the week again with the normal chores and things that tend to keep us busy during the week.

The weekends never seem to last as long as you want to. Nor do I ever get accomplished all the things that I wanted done before the new week starts again.

I did get my duck painted and decided that one of the light poles was looking worse for wear and quite ugly so I decided to give it a bit of a floral over haul as well. As I was enjoying the outdoors and never one to saying no to using paint I even started on some more tires for planters.

I had decided to try painting the tires at first with spray paint. It went on easy and with no effort but I was not happy with the end result and one can pretty much would only do two small tires. Given I still have dozens to go through or get rid of not sure that it will end up economic to use the spray painting. As I already had my paints out to give the "duck" its spring cleaning and touch up I found that the acrylic worked much better and was the right colour that I was looking for.

I have yet to set up the pond as I am still figuring out where would be the best place to put it. We had some rain over the weekend so trying to see where we end up getting water pooling outside and where it drains off too.

My plan for the pond is to make a small Japanese garden. A small Tsukiyama Garden to be specific.

Tsukiyama Garden

Ponds, streams, hills, stones, trees, flowers, bridges and paths are used to create a miniature reproduction of a natural scenery which is often a famous landscape in China or Japan. The name Tsukiyama refers to the creation of artificial hills. Tsukiyama gardens vary in size and in the way they are viewed. Smaller gardens are usually enjoyed from a single viewpoint, such as the veranda of a temple, while many larger gardens are best experienced by following a circular scrolling path.

I had already decided given my 3 year old and 6 year old boys tendency to get in to trouble that I was going to have to come up with something to stop them using the pond as their own personal swimming pool. A small bridge going over the middle and deepest part of it and including fish and water lilies I am hoping will interest them enough to prevent the inevitable dip in to the unknown.

These pictures shown are on the large scale and I have a much smaller scale in mind but gives you the general idea of the peacefulness and tranquility that these kind of gardens provide.

Finding plants that are also suitable with the cold climate should also prove interesting and will involve some investigation before any planting is done. Thankfully my mother in law is great with information on this and on what carp fish to get that actually do survive through winter.

A small garden bridge DIY style is in order. http://www.buildeazy.com/bridge.html