Down the drain

Followers of this blog may remember an entry last summer about fixing the leak in our pond ("Our Pond," 8/12/12).

Today I must report an unhappy follow-up to that episode. Around midday, I stepped out on the deck to look across our little world as the weather cleared after three days of rain -- and saw that the pond had disappeared.

OMG!

Apparently our hard-won repair to the outflow gave way against water pressure and split sometime overnight, emptying the entire half-acre basin in one big swoosh.


We knew this was a possibility but had fingers crossed all winter and spring, hoping the patch would hold and we could effect a proper repair under controlled conditions at our convenience this summer.

Alas, not to be.

Now it's an emergency repair, for there's just a small pool left in the deepest part where a few fishes managed to survive. The rest, presumably, went down the drain with the water and, hopefully, made it all the way through the runoff channel through the woods to the river (which itself had been stripped of aquatic life two years ago during the flooding from Hurricane Irene).

Hubby rigged a rope to hang on to as he slid down the mucky slope to inspect the damages. Along the way, he found a dozen or so freshwater clams still alive, stuck on the exposed bank, and tossed them into the pool. So maybe there will be enough creatures left over to repopulate when all is done and the pond refills. Too soon to tell.

Not only is this a distressing hit to a micro ecosystem, but also an unwelcome disruption to our already too-long list of delayed and complicated projects. *sigh* The joys of homeownership and land stewardship.

Here's how it looks. I hope, in the not too distant future, to post a photo of the normal water level back up against the bottom of the dock.

Unexpected consequences

The log-out described in previous post is finally finished. Well, at least the tree-dropping part. There’s a whole lot left over that still needs attending to, both by them and by us.

Their part is finishing the cut: limbing, bucking, hauling, stumping, and, for the big tree in the yard, chipping. Whether this will be accomplished sooner rather than later remains to be seen, as we now have snow and ice on the ground.

Our part is cleaning up slash still in the way around the perimeter, filling in innumerable holes, removing or repairing items that got damaged by dropped trunks (i.e., my garden). This must wait until spring.

That leaves the pond. During the first phase, two trees were most safely dropped across the pond, which had a good ice cover. Those trunks were then dragged out and processed, leaving limbs, branches, and pine needles galore floating around amid and atop the now shattered ice.

A few days of wacky weather thawed things enough that we could launch the good-old aluminum Grumman canoe and extract debris before it either sank en masse to acidify the water or plug up the outflow during spring thaw. Armed with paddle and rake, we poked and pulled and dragged until the boat was so burdened that we literally couldn’t move! A stiff breeze didn’t help.

Oh, for somebody with a camera! We looked ludicrous stuck ten feet from shore, laughing hysterically, while mixed moisture spat down from a steely sky and limbs longer than the boat dragged their branches like sea anchors along both sides.

Musclepower (and lack of options) eventually hauled us to land. But before we could ease our frozen and strained muscles in a hot shower, we still had to dump the load above waterline and drag the canoe back to storage for the winter.

Within 24 hours, the pond had refrozen. Although we didn’t remove half the debris in there, it has now sunk out of sight. So all that effort was probably for nothing. We’ll know in April when winter’s grip lets go.