Pond!

I don't have much time so I'm mostly just going to leave pictures of what we did today! It's bank holiday Monday and the whole family got involved...

Having got Mum's approval on the pond shape and size (she's a bit of a pond expert, having made a huge one in her garden a couple of years ago) we went out to get a pond liner (just under £30 for the liner and fleecy underlay stuff) and started filling it.

Didn't take long - it's not a very big pond - which was good because without a hose we had to fill it by bucket! Mum and I dug a little trench to bury the edge of the liner, while Dad, Steve and Jess put together our storage bench. (At last!!) Now we don't have to keep all our stuff in the communal shed and we have a comfy place to sit and rest from all that hard digging!!

This is the pond complete, seen from the comfort of our brand spanking new bench.

I bought a few marginal plants for it too, and Mum and Dad gave us some oxygenating weed (and no doubt a few pond-creepy-crawlies) from their pond. Seen below are water mint, sweet flag and an iris (purple, when it flowers in the summer).
All this was pretty exciting, but most exciting of all...

The very first asparagus spear has popped up! (Guess I did plant them the right way up then!) It's going to be torture not harvesting any this year to let the plants get established. We're allowed to take a few next year but don't get a full harvest 'til the third year! But it's going to be so worth it!