The 800-Gallon Pond

 
 
  Its hard to see from the photos, but the pond is shaped like a distorted butterfly. I started building this pond in August 1996. The maximum depth of the pond is 2ft. Digging to a depth of one foot was a simple matter, but digging any deeper in the compacted clay soil became extremely difficult, and felt more like digging into a slab of stone. Overall this took about two weeks. Building the waterfall and coping took another two weeks. It took me another four weekends to get the water flowing over the waterfall stone rather than under it. I did learn a lot about gravity, however.