This is what happens at the end of summer... everything has grown and multiplied to fill the available surface space. It looks great, but it's difficult to find a hole through which to feed the fish!

At the far end of the pond, you can see the bamboo fencing that we bought from the great folks at Bamboo & Rattan Works in Lakewood, NJ (908-370-0220). The pieces of bamboo go down 2 feet and the fence solves the problem of how to make the sharp edge (where the skimmer sits) look nice. I built the skimmer myself for about $25 following the directions from Waterscape by Bart. About all you can see from this (or any) angle is the flat rock that sits on top of it.

Our home-grown frogs have become really tame. We can get within a few inches of them before they hop into the water.

If you have a pond and you have trees, you must get a leaf net! It's made of black nylon (you can hardly see it) and it keeps all the big leafs out of the pond.

Another fall picture with the leaf net positioned over the pond. Since many birds take baths in the upper waterfall area, there is no leaf net there. A couple times, birds got stuck under the netting, but they eventually found their way out. Also note the use of four bamboo sticks to hold up the netting... bamboo is also showing up all around our garden.

We kept the pump running through the winter again (although I was ready to pull the plug and take it out at a moments notice). It never got cold enough to freeze the waterfall area and our new floating pond de-icer took care of keeping the waterway open in front of the skimmer intake.

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