If You Can Think Of It If You Can Dream Of It You Can Achieve It

A Family Project: From Swimming Pool to Koi Pond. And a wonderful ten years journey since. 

June 24, 2010 - 2020.

Happy Father's Day Wishes and Love to You from Your Friday Reflections Family.

Point to Ponder: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Story Line: The video above covers the journey of a family project we started in the spring of 2010. The first part was to remove the high maintenance, low use swimming pool that was occupying majority of our backyard. The second part was to create a Koi Pond with the help of an expert. And the third part was where we enriched the surroundings with varieties of fish, trees, flower plants and other items. What you see in the video is the evolution of surroundings through the years; majestic colors of the landscape through four seasons, reflections of sunlight during different parts of the day, many varieties of plants, flowers, fruit trees and diversity of wildlife (Birds, Bees, Butterflies, Animals and of course Lizards and Garden Snakes. Not to forget manyfriends from various countries have blessed this pond with their presence. People may find hard to believe that this 'not so secret garden' is very low maintenance compared to what it was before the change.

Reflection: Next Wednesday, June 24th is the tenth anniversary of this creation. It has been a wonderful journey full of fun and a lot of learnings about gardening and wildlife. Every member of family was involved; our son and his mother very intensely, me providing the management guidance (lol) and vision for the size of the pond, our son in law and daughter providing vegetable plants and share their deep experience. Some friends also provided flowers and vegetable plants. Many new lessons learnt; here are the top three.

1. Hire the best man for the job, the second best is too expensive. The person who built our pond was professional, knowledgable, responsive, with high degree of integrity and good people working for him. Till today we haven't had any major issues with the pond. 
2. Let things evolve and don't give up too soon. After getting only 5,7 and 6 cherries from 4th to 6th years, I was thinking of removing the tree. My wife suggested to give some more time. I guess the tree heard us and since then we have had years with continuously increasing crops; this year yielded  2000 cherries. Similarly after the drought years, three old evergreen trees looked pale and terrible. Called tree doctor who recommended doing expensive lab analysis and also removal of two out of three. Our gardner suggested to water them a lot and give some tender loving care. Since then those three are blooming with beautiful white flowers every February and early moring sunshine turns them into majestic gold colors. (in video)
3. Maintaining a balanced eco-system is very important. In nature there is a good reason for the way things are. Removing garden snakes created an imbalace that opened up opportunities for frogs and rats to invade the garden. Only when the park ranger saw us dropping a snake in the woods, he educated us about the benefits of garden snakes and their harmlessness. Since then the rats and frogs have moved away.  Garden Snake

Enjoy the video. Happy Weekend. 

Comments

[CH]

Enjoy watching the video, see how the swimming pool could be turned into garden. There are many BKMs there. But I think the Garden Snakes BKM would not be agreed by my wife. :)

[ST]

Nature and nurture!! It is ever so beautiful and if it brings a smile to your face then all the efforts are worth it. Bless you and your family for creating such a magical garden which shows lot of love and care. Good luck going forward to many more years. I have always enjoyed the pictures and videos shared by you.

[Pulao Penang]

Wonderful transformation and so meaningful for you and family. Enjoy the video very much.

[Sharon Johnston]

This is a definite labor of love, guided by Spirit. What a beautiful oasis!

[FE-Japan]

Love the garden and the lessons! 🙂

[Roger]

Nice garden and landscaping hah If you don’t begin you will not win

[Bhakti Kavit Shah]

You have created a mini heaven🤗👏so divine

[Sam]

Except for lesson #3, everything else looks doable :)

[Humble Warrior]

Beautiful, not only does it make ur home so beautiful and Serene but also the wildlife has enjoyed the new abode as well! So it once was a pool?

[Adventurous]

Beautiful! Most important thing in life is finding what makes you happy and doing it.

[humble warrior]

wow #2 is a great result from showing patience.. most would removed... well done, its blossomed so well... very happy and serene place for your family and the wildlife

[AN]

What a serene escape!

[Shardamandir Friend]

excellent wow what a transformation of back yard , looks great 👍

[SB]

it is so beautiful, the pond, so relaxing and inviting. Love it.

[Madhuri]

Labor of Love- is what this is. As I watched the video, I recalled several FRs- Your mom, Lily, Hummingbirds, the Crane waiting for a nibble... And I remembered fondly, the times that I have visited.

I especially like Lesson # 2.
Happy 10th Anniversary dear yard :)