New pond

First of all, the biggest task outstanding for us has now been completed. We have posted our VAT return off to the assessors and now can only sit and wait for their response.

We had over 400 receipts, and probably another 60 or 70 backup pages as well as the form. I am hoping that it has arrived safely, although I took a photo of every page, just to be on the safe side. (It took absolutely ages, so I really hope that we don't need to do it all again.) 

Much more interestingly than that though, we are taking our parental responsibilities seriously now that our fish have had babies. 

Yesterday, I decided that the path from the greenhouse would have to go, and we are building a new, bigger pond in its place. 

The sand is where the path used to be, and very annoyingly, we bought quite a few bags of sand to make the mosaics in the greenhouse only last week. We could have used this sand instead, but I hadn't thought of it then, so now we have lots of surplus buckets full of sand that need a home.

Darren has chopped up some lovely wooden beams from Wickes, and the pond is going to be partly raised above the ground. It might end up looking like a sauna, but hopefully not. 

It is going to be pretty deep and we are planning on keeping it full by harvesting the water from the roof of the greenhouse. We have two dry days before it is due to rain pretty heavily so we are hoping to get it built by then. 

I think that is a bit of a stretch target as there is a lot to do to get it finished, but we are going to give it a go.