It’s time to build a water feature near the south end of the house. Paul has flagged out the space, carefully siting it within already-landscaped areas. And the digging begins. This pond will have an outside shelf of about one foot, likely lined with rocks from the place to build the right microbial life, then drop down to another shelf and then go deep enough to support some pretty fish, as yet to be determined.

How about tilapia or catfish? We considered it, then realized we’re either too lazy or too distracted to harvest such fish and eat them, so we’re leaning toward some nice goldfish. Well, they used to be called goldfish. Now they’re called koi. In any case, the guy from Craig’s List who just sold us the pond liner is growing koi and is charging $10 to $20 for them, not the $25,000 we’d heard about! So maybe we’ll just grow koi.

Far as this writer’s concerned, as long as that pond is big and nice enough to slide into at the end of a tough day in the orchard or timber, we don’t care who we gotta share it with!