Water Feature

My second post for today. WOYWW visitors, please scroll down for the desk-hopping post.

When we moved house just over two years ago, the agents’ particulars mentioned a water feature outside our kitchen window. We knew it was there somewhere but didn’t know exactly what it involved, or whether it still worked. There is a small quarter-circle shaped patio area in the angle of the utility room/back passage wall and the kitchen window, with a low wall, above which the earth is banked up the slope to the back of the garage. This area has always been very overgrown and not a bit attractive, and it has been on my hubby’s list of things to do for some time now. This is the view from the large kitchen window, and I spend quite a lot of time at the kitchen sink, and it would be so nice the view from the window actually looked attractive!

The other day he did a huge amount of clearing and I couldn’t believe the transformation. Unfortunately I didn’t take a “before” picture. When it had been cleared, another little wall was revealed which makes a feature across the banked up area, divided in the middle by the gulley of the water feature. My hubby added a few more rocks to the front part, and we are going to get some aubretia to cascade over the bottom wall, and some pretty rockery plants and make the whole area something worth looking at. As we did last summer, we will have tubs of flowers on the ground, up against the wall.

Today my hubby got the water feature going! He found the cable in the outhouse and plugged it in. He poured some water into the bottom part which has a perforated plastic strainer to keep stuff from falling in, and the pump pushed the water up to the top, from where it started to flow down the little gulley between the rocks. To start with it looked quite impressive! He had put too much water in and it overflowed down the wall at the front – you can see the muddy water stain there, in the second photo below. Gradually the flow diminished to nothing, and he thinks there’s a leak somewhere, which isn’t very surprising given how long it hasn’t been in use and all the accumulated earth and stones and dead leaves etc. which he had to clear out. He’s still out there now trying to find where the leak is. He may have to put in a new piece of plastic pond liner to solve the problem.

Anyway, this is what it looked like when he first got it going – unfortunately the photo really doesn’t look as good as it did in real life!! Although you can’t really see it, there is water flowing down from just in front of the wooden pallet at the top, beyond which you can see the end of the garage wall.

Here’s my hubby in his gardening togs, showing off his handiwork! I think he might have looked a bit more cheerful – I am extremely impressed with what he has done! Actually he’s probably half-frozen – it’s really cold out there today. (So much for the nurse on the endoscopy unit yesterday telling him to put his feet up and relax today! Ha ha.)

The whole area was completely overgrown, and there were several quite large, and very uninspiring and unattractive shrubs which he has removed. At my request he left the fig tree.

I’ll post more photos as the work progresses.