This is what I started with today. Before dealing with the pole, I fished out an amount of blanket weed, and found one piece of hessian and a very old piece of bark. Once the mud settles a little and the plots dries off a bit, I really need to do more netting and simply get my arm down into the water. Plenty more material has slid down there, including mud and stones, meaning that the depth is currently only 12-15”, which is terrible.

After a brainwave last night, I screwed four 13cm screws about 4cm into the back pole. It was a huge battle to get it in as the original work platform of the ladder simply isn’t an option right now (not least because the shed is jammed shut) so I was doing all kinds of ill-advised leaning and balancing on logs. It was very difficult to get the screws to all go into the bank, but once I moved the pole up into the corner (making the shortfall at the easy end), I managed to push it into place with a lot of swearing and smacking it with the compost heap pole.

I wedged the corner end with an edging piece again, which also makes a nice entrance/exit slope. I’d prefer the pole be pushed in further, but someone else will have to do that.

The screws mean that I’ve got something to tie a cord onto and then attach to the fence or a staple, without it showing around the front of the pole. I hope I’ll be able to do this before the pole falls back into the pond with all the rain forecast 😬