Sunny.

The day began looking as if we might have rain but just got hotter and hotter right through to the evening.

In the morning I put the pond underlay in which wasn't too hard as it could be cut and laid in sections unlike the liner proper which had to be carefully folded around all the corners. It was as I tried to work it out that I wondered if it would have been more sensible just to have a simple cuboid shape to deal with. But then I wouldn't have a fancy ledge for the marginal plants. It was only as I filled the pond half-way and was smoothing out the bottom of the liner that I found I had left a stone under the liner. I had to empty out all the water, for which the garden plants were grateful, before I could slide my hand in and remove the stone. I cut the liner back in stages to avoid cutting away too much and will trim it even more when I cement down the coping stones. Just for fun I threw in two of the metal garden balls and they've been bobbing around as they get caught by the wind.

Pond work stopped for a few hours as I went to the stables to help with the RDA session. It was much calmer this week. The child who had become agitated when the pony came to a halt last week became used to stopping for a count of five before the pony walked on again. We increased the length of the halt by slowing down the counting rather than adding more numbers. I'm finding my Welsh coming in useful with another child who is more used to hearing Welsh. 

On my way home, I've abandoned my plan of going to the supermarket afterwards as the traffic queue into town was terrible, I stopped at the garden centre again. They had even fewer pond plants than last week and I ended up only buying some water mint for the pond and a stipa tenuissima for the grass bed. I shouldn't really have begun filling in the raised beds before I cement down the coping stones on the inside of the bed but it was just too tempting to see how it would look.