tackling the second pond

The army has been firing some very heavy artillery for the past three days, four guns one after another in rapid succession, in vollies that make the house shake.  The Systems Administrator said that it sounded like practice battery firing, and that it is usually done on the ranges up in Northumberland but moves to Essex during the grouse shooting season.  I asked if the sound of gunfire disturbed the grouse particularly, and the S.A. said that it was more a question of not shelling the shooting parties.

I put on my waders and set out to tackle the wildlife pond in the meadow, but soon discovered that it was so dry that the waders were de trop.  I hope the water has simply evaporated, and the pond hasn't sprung a leak.  It has a butyl liner, but I have allowed a lot of brambles and shrubs to grow around it.  Indeed, it has alder trees growing in it, plus so many reeds and iris that I haven't made it to the far side yet.  Things seem to be getting slightly damper as I go downhill, and I haven't seen any holes or damage to the liner, so I'm reasonably optimistic so far that it will hold water when refilled.

I had assumed that I would be scooping out wet gloop, but it turned out that the layer of soil covering the liner was held together with a very solid matrix of roots.  Instead I found I had to cut through the roots with secateurs, and remove the soil in slabs, almost like lifting turf.   Using the secateurs, and occassionally the loppers, I am careful to hold the mat of roots and earth clear of the liner as I cut, to avoid stabbing it.  Progress has been impeded around the edges by the ornamental cobbles originally used to cover the liner, which are now embedded in the root mat, invisible until I hit them with the secateurs.  This is the first time I've ever cleared the pond out, and we made it over a decade ago.  The soil and roots accumulated since then measures between 5cm and 15cm thick.  It is, I think, an example of a hydrosere, the process whereby bodies of fresh water tend to convert to dry land, without intervention to maintain them as open water.  Whenever I've asked wildlife experts from the Essex Wildlife Trust the best time to clear out a pond, they've always said that ideally you don't, just dig another.  But that isn't really an option in a domestic garden with limited space, and if I don't clear the pond then at some point in the future I won't have one any more, just a butyl lined bed filled with alder trees.

The chickens are great creatures of habit.  Yesterday I let them out early, in mid afternoon, as it was such a lovely day and I was working in the front garden to keep an eye on them.  I thought it would be a treat for them, instead of which they were intensely suspicious, took a long time to come out, and after eating some grass retreated back into their run.  The Systems Administrator tempted them out with Value Sultanas (the rooster can recognise the sultana container at a considerable distance) but soon after eating their snack they went back into the run, until it got to proper chicken letting out time, a couple of hours before sunset, at which point they came out happily under the S.A.'s supervision.  Right person, right time.  I consoled myself that at least they weren't pining all day in their run for the final bit of the afternoon when they would be allowed out.  Final bit of the afternoon seems to be all that they want.