Building a pond and terraced gardens is taking up most of our time and energy these days. Owen's Raco Construction here on Whidbey Island is doing the work - it's amazing to watch good masons create these beautiful walls. But, the mud has been awful. Sometimes I wonder if the place will ever recover!

The pond has to have a liner because the glacial till that underlies our fabulous sandy loam topsoil is porous. The pond is being built to collect rain from the building roofs and the driveway. It is very deep to reduce loss from evaporation. But, we're not completely sensible because we also are creating a stream bed that will circulate water from the main pond to a small holding pond above and back down. It's going to be fabulous - once the pond fills up. I figure it will take all winter and spring to fill the pond. The snow we had just after Thanksgiving weekend put a stop to the project for a week.