When we were building our home, I needed an area where I could get away from all the noise and dust of construction. I cleared a small area at the bottom of our property and asked my husband to cut some rounds of downed trees so I could make a small patio under some trees. I leveled the ground, set the rounds in and filled it all with beach sand. It worked well and since then it has become a lovely place to sit and watch the birds and enjoy the view. I now have a porch swing and chairs down there.
This summer I got a idea that a small water feature down there would bring in more birds. I found a solar fountain that would do the trick. I already had some pond liner so all I had to do was excavate a small area and make it deep enough for a pump. No problem, right? It didn’t go quite the way I planned. I dug down about a foot and hit basalt rock. I tried the area around it to no avail. I commandeered my poor husband once again and asked him for some muscle. He did make some progress but not enough. So there it sat. When my son in law come to visit I whined a bit to him about it and he valiantly took up the cause. After several hours of working with a sledge hammer he had broken up some of the rock and we were down about 18 inches. A week later a young friend came to visit and upon asking what the hole was for, was recruited to the task. He also worked with a sledge hammer and pry bar and widened the hole as well as deepening it. He gave up after a couple of hours.
But the hole still wasn’t deep enough and I was just about ready to give up when my husband came down to look at the rock. He smiled and told me not to worry he could take it from there. He is a rockhound and has many chisels and wedges use to split rocks. He got to work tapping and splitting and started to pull our large pieces of the now broken rock. It was done!!!
I asked him for advise what to do next. He said clean it out, put down a layer of sand for the liner to rest on,add a bit more sand and a few rocks in the bottom and set the pump.
That seemed easy enough so I got to work. I had collected several 5 gallon buckets of sand from the beach so I laid in a layer. Then I cut the liner to put in but to be safe I added a bit more sand to keep it from tearing on the rock chips. The I cleaned off all the split rocks I had saved and laid in a nice base adding some gravel for affect and a few more to support the pump. I stood back and surveyed my work. It didn’t look like I imagined it would. The fountain stuck up in the air and looked weird. I went up and asked my husband to come and look and give me his opinion. He came down to one look and turned to me.
“A whole team of hard laborers have worked their fingers to the bone to make this deep enough for you and you have turned around and filled it up again.”
He was right I had filled in the hole so it was once again ground level.
“Oh, I guess I should dig it up and start again, right?’
He just walked off laughing and shaking his head..
I did and it works and the birds love it. Dale went one step further and dug a water and power line down to my little sanctuary.
