9.04.2023 Pond, dish or birdbath?

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 Sunday 9th 35F. Bright and clear after another, overnight frost. My back is aching again. A walk should help.

 View from the bathroom window.

 My plan to make a pond so close to the tree stump may backfire. There could be a mass of roots. Some rather large. Perhaps I should reconsider that precise location. Distance makes the pond come closer. Mowing around the pond will be no problem. I'll just use a strimmer.

 8.30 44F. Back from my walk. Lots of skylarks. I thought I saw my first swallow. The traffic was light but lots of tractors. Which is unusual. I saw my first bee and butterflies yesterday. I hope they survived the overnight frost.

10.00 I was lucky there were no roots larger than my thumb. Excavation completed. Dish pond in place. It will look less "obvious" once there is greenery around it. I imagine algae will soon take hold. The old pond [top left] is full of floating azolla. So I could import some of that.

View from the balcony. That small, white carbuncle is 6' across.

 10.30 Leveling the soil around the pond is almost competed. I plan to lift the dish and back-fill where necessary for even support. 

I don't want any large cavities under the dish. Otherwise the weight of all that water might press the pond out of level over time. A hard edged, formal pond needs to be perfectly level. Or it will look amateurish. 

 Very little rain is forecast. So it may need some help from the tap. Four buckets full might give the birds the right idea. The resulting puddle was about a meter or 3' across. Average annual rainfall for Denmark is about 0.75m. The area of the pond is 3.142 x 0.9^2 = 2.5m^2. The area of the house roof [in plan] is about 50m^2. Or a 20:1 ratio in area. More so if the areas of both roof slopes are taken into account. I'll ignore this for the moment.

 If every drop of rain is directed to the pond from the gutter down pipes. It would help to fill the pond. The average depth of the pond is [very roughly] somewhere around 0.5 x 28cm. Or 14cm. So I cm of rainfall on the house roof at 20:1 should easily fill the pond. The forecast rain of 2cm from Monday evening to Wednesday evening should be double the amount needed. We shall see. There are bound to be losses.  

 After lunch I went for a ride on the trike to buy more tea. A supermarket in another village was staying open for Easter. I had forgotten how hard work it is to ride a purely manual cycle! Not to mention how hard and rough the roads are. 20km at 18kmh average speed. 

 A sunny 13C, so I wore just racing shorts without leggings. Breathable cycling jacket over a cycling, racing jersey. Fingerless mitts. Perfectly comfortable. Except for the Brooks saddle. Which I had taken off the e-bike again. The trike's steering seemed a bit odd at times. So I must have adapted to 2-wheels since my last trike ride. The difference in handling was soon forgotten. Now I am really looking forwards to riding my e-bike again.

It's Sunday. Does that mean Sunday dinner? I had better check the larder and 'fridge. Everything was perfect. 😋 Except for the picture. It was taken by natural light. It looks cold.

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