The liner was too hot to handle in the sun yesterday, so today’s 12ºC was chilly, but we could at least touch the liner. It went fairly well. It ripped down a seam early on, which was alarming, but fortunately we had so much that turning the liner 90º still left us with plenty to work with.

There’s a paddle stone sitting on a scrap of polythene at the bottom of the deep part. It’s narrow part down, leaving some hiding spaces – until all the stones inevitably fall down there. I’ll also double line the bird bowl to give it some more protection against pecking.

The liner is a little short on the left hand side, but I’m hoping it will still be ok. I’ll probably stick some extra liner in there as backup. We filled it up with the muddy bottom water from the old pond and I threw in all the hornwort I could find from the top water box. The elodea isn’t going back, but needs a good rinse to save the wildlife.

The pots of pickerel weed, yellow iris, water violet and creeping Jenny have gone onto the marginal shelf. The water violet needs to be bigger before it can go down into the deeper hole.

Most of the water has come from the well, collected by Mr B. He’s going to do another jerry can for me, so that’ll probably be all I need from the well. Then comes all the work of building back the banks…