I admit that I was sorely tempted tonight at close of play to dip down to the Co op to buy a bottle of wine! It was a frustrating day overall. Woken up by my digger alarm call I thought about pulling the duvet over my head as Id been dealing with demanding correspondence until after 1am. I couldnt get away with it and climbed out my bed at 9am but I was still in my dressing gown with a strength 6 Hot lava coffee in front of the computer at 11! The Amazon delivery to Germany which Id though released 6 days ago and which we were waiting to see in store hadnt even left France and Amazon were threatening a 500 euro fine if it arrived without a time slot which wed been told last week we didnt need! This has become so frustrating and trying to reach and deal with people over there has had us grinding teeth and biting tongues. My Mum and Dad arrived at 1.30 by which time Id pulled on the shorts, shirt and sandals to venture out and discover a visiting Rab and Willie the wee digger operator tearing away at the Japanese garden the pneumatic hammer drill poking into the remains of what was the top pond of an old water feature created back in 91. I left my parents skyping Tara as I bounced between the Amazon problem and the pond excavation. When Id designed the layout for Funny Farm studios the main office sat between my house and the studio itself. A gentle grassy slope from the old drying green to the house suggested a water feature as it was surrounded on all sides by buildings which would reflect the sound of a tumbling waterfall. I somehow fell into the clutches of a couple of guys, one Australian the other English who were landscapers specialising in water features with an office at a well known local garden centre. I already had the design and just wanted to use 2 preformed plastic pools built into the slope with straight edged surrounding walls and a large slate slab as the conduit for the water from the upper to the lower pool. Seemples! But they had other ideas and insisted they use all their expertise to create proper special concrete ponds with liners and brickwork a go go! I admit it looked fantastic and both ponds were filled with round white stones that gleamed in the tumbling water that cascaded over the slate from top to bottom pools. A week or so later I noticed the water levels dropping and after a few top ups I realised this wasnt normal. I asked them to come back and check it and as expected there were excuses and theories and small adjustments to the slate with a liquid plastic lip added as they thought the water was escaping by running back under the overhang! Weeks passed and it got worse. I measured the amount of water it was losing and it came to about 10 litres a day! Back my 2 experts came with a new theory! It must be evaporation! they said. This isnt the effin Sahara! I said as my patience started to wear down in the face of incessant bullshit. Theres a leak, fix it or money back!. I got half the money back and soon after their company disappeared. I was left with a leaking pond and for the rest of its life it was switched on irregularly when visitors came but spent most of its time as an algae soup and a haven for a large insect population. When I sold the house and the property was split, the office knocked down and a fence built in the gap between the properties, I turned my attention back to the ponds and decided to go back to my original idea. The first incarnation post split was a bit of a disaster when I used a pond liner after excavating all the old material and adding a sand cushion. Tara helped me build my first ever wall from rough sandstone blocks and cement and we finished up adding the old washed stones from the first pond putting them carefully on to the liner. I think this was the mistake as soon after another leak drained the pond and it was left until 2010 when I brought in a preformed pool from the front pond and totally revamped the area into the Japanese garden with ferns, black bamboo and grasses. I used old girders to form the water way and drop with the pump sending up to a filter before it filled an ancient looking urn which spilled from the foliage beneath the maple tree into one girder and a drop to another girder which cascaded to the pond below. A few timbers to hide the plastic pond edges and a year later it had filled out into a magical corner of the garden, just outside my bedroom and my office windows. Today I had to watch on as that place was ripped apart and I had no choice as the main drainage manhole was directly in the centre of it all. The toilets and showers in the extension had to feed along new pipes which had to be routed directly through where the girder arrangement was. Watching the original top pond revealed for the first time since 91 drew some amusement from Andrew and Willie as we discovered the experts had done everything in double brick with a liner between the courses all cemented in solidly. Just as we thought it couldnt get more ridiculous Willie then hit metal and discovered the base was actually reinforced with steel rods! Lots of chortling and I cursed those bullshitting pond engineers under my breath! I tried to save as many plants as I could from the surrounds but some of the ferns were too entrenched and tight in crevices to save. The water plants will have to fend for themselves in the shade until I get the new design together in the coming weeks as there is nowhere for them to go. I had to empty the pond as we have to move it to try and discover exactly where all the drainage goes and we also have to turn the manhole round 180 degrees as the idiot who put it in installed it the wrong way around to accept the flow of solids and liquids which meant it prone to blocking ( as it has done and now I know why!) It was one setback after another today. We will discover more about how the mains water is routed tomorrow when we remove the preformed pool and get into the surrounds. I had to machete a crowd of bamboo stems yesterday to make room and managed to get my finger speared with a cut stem sticking out the ground like a punji stick! Luckily it pierced where I had a hard lump of Dupytren growth rather than hitting soft flesh. If not for that it would have sliced my finger wide open. On the plus side the wagon arrived today and took away a lot of the spoil with my farmer neighbour paying a visit to get some of it sent over for him to use as hardcore. I hope he remembers that when the boundary line comes into question! He filled me in on a bit of the history of the site as his family have been here for nearly 100 years. It wasnt as much as I hoped but it was more than we knew before. I am still trying to find out more about the fire of 74 and want to go down to the local East Lothian Courier offices to go through archives to find out more about it before I relate the story in full. The one mysterious thing we found today, of which the farmer knew nothing about, was what seems an old rough cobbled road under the concrete weve lifted up. Its definitely man made but we wont know any more until we start exposing it tomorrow. Tomorrow is going to be a mucky and wet day as we shift the pond and get back into the search for the water routing. I need to get into the neighbours old byre as a lot of pipework runs through it and we have to find out the source of the supply as it seems to come from 2 different places. I hope we dont have to go near the Death Star wasp nest! Theres also a mains electric cable we need to identify as being redundant before we start carving up more ground. I was covered in shit today and no doubt I will be covered in shit again tomorrow. Digger alarm is set for 8am as always! I do have a physio session on my back and shoulder at 3 in Gullane to look forward to, Steve Vantsis is up just before the German game and Rab, Jamie S and I intend to go for a walk out into Aberlady bay tomorrow night to see the sunken midget WW2 submarines in the sunset after the match. Tomorrow holds a lot of promise. Tonight in zed land I will be designing the next Japanese Garden!
Posted on: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 22:06:37 +0000