Aaron S
K5ATG
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2014
- Messages
- 202
- Reaction score
- 171
- Location
- Midwest City, OK
- Showcase(s):
- 1
- Hardiness Zone
- 7a
My ponding woes started about 4 years ago. My mother lost here house and she had a little preformed pond that was put at my place for "temporary" storage. After 2 years of dealing with this thing in my yard, so we ended up installing it in a flowerbed that was boxed by the house, driveway and sidewalk. This little pond worked pretty good for about 2 years, then we experienced a couple of problems.
Problem #1) My son has Aspergers Syndrome mixed with extreme high anxiety. Once we put the pond in my son started using it to help deal with stress and to relax. This became a great benefit for having the pond
. Well one day he was 8 years old and he woke up and could not move anything below his neck. So we called the ambulance and sent him to the local hospital, they could not find anything so they airlifted him to Children's Hospital about 8 miles away. Again they could not find anything wrong with him and he was in the hospital for 5 weeks with not much improvement. Then finally his geneticists had a breakthrough. This other geneticists did a study and found 4 known cases of this in the country. When my son gets stressed out his muscles will start deteriorating. So they checked his PCK level. This is the enzyme that is produced when a muscle experiences trauma. This is what makes your muscles hurt after a workout. On a normal adult, their PCK level will go up to 150 after experiencing a high speed roll over car crash. When we check his it was over 4,000! So they flushed his system as best as they could and eventually he came home but was in a wheelchair for a couple of months. One day me and him was working on the little pond enjoying some father son time. He was still in the wheelchair and I needed to run to the store to get a part. He was outside watching the pond and his little sister and mom came out while I was gone. Then they went back inside and the second he was by himself the neighbor across the street came over and started cussing out my son! He was saying that my son was faking everything and just got in his face. This was a 40 year old man going after an 8 year old boy in a wheelchair. When I arrived my son was dragging himself up on the porch trying to drag himself into the house to get away and this guy was running across the street. So cops were called and the entire incident just made it to where my son would not go outside for anything.
Problem #2 Later that summer we had dust bowl type drought. It go so dry that the ground around the pond shrunk way up. Then I turned on the water hose to water the flower bed. The ground got wet and expanded so quickly that it busted a 6 inch gash in the pond!
Thankfully a friend at work had a large liner that he was not using so he gave it to me. So it was without a question that the new pond will be in the back yard. So because our fish were living in a bucket we acted too fast and threw the pond in the ground with out really thinking about it.
So far we have not been very happy with the location of it and we need a much better filter system. So we must figure out how to have a stream with cascading waterfall and either a bog filter or a Skippy filter. I do want something that works.
Here is a few other pics around the pond.
This here is my waterfall right after installation.
This is the overall view of the pond. Don't care much for the green water.
One of my Rose Rocks. Central Oklahoma is one of the very few places where they occur naturally. I got this one while fishing at a lake about 3 miles from my house.
I include some history in my pond. The flat chunk of concrete came from the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, after the Oklahoma City Bombing. The little chunk to the left of it was some debris found in my yard during the May 2013 Tornado Outbreak. The one in the concrete next to that came from my elementary school when they tore it down to build a brand new school. I don't know why but I save stuff like that. Inside the house we also have a piece of the Berlin Wall that my wife got. She was living about a block away from it when they tore it down.
This guy here keeps a watchful eye over my pond. It is a little hard to see but this is my Jesus rock. I got bored one day about a decade ago and found this flat part on this rock and found my rotary tool and free handed it in. It is not the best drawing but this was my first in rock.
Problem #1) My son has Aspergers Syndrome mixed with extreme high anxiety. Once we put the pond in my son started using it to help deal with stress and to relax. This became a great benefit for having the pond
. Well one day he was 8 years old and he woke up and could not move anything below his neck. So we called the ambulance and sent him to the local hospital, they could not find anything so they airlifted him to Children's Hospital about 8 miles away. Again they could not find anything wrong with him and he was in the hospital for 5 weeks with not much improvement. Then finally his geneticists had a breakthrough. This other geneticists did a study and found 4 known cases of this in the country. When my son gets stressed out his muscles will start deteriorating. So they checked his PCK level. This is the enzyme that is produced when a muscle experiences trauma. This is what makes your muscles hurt after a workout. On a normal adult, their PCK level will go up to 150 after experiencing a high speed roll over car crash. When we check his it was over 4,000! So they flushed his system as best as they could and eventually he came home but was in a wheelchair for a couple of months. One day me and him was working on the little pond enjoying some father son time. He was still in the wheelchair and I needed to run to the store to get a part. He was outside watching the pond and his little sister and mom came out while I was gone. Then they went back inside and the second he was by himself the neighbor across the street came over and started cussing out my son! He was saying that my son was faking everything and just got in his face. This was a 40 year old man going after an 8 year old boy in a wheelchair. When I arrived my son was dragging himself up on the porch trying to drag himself into the house to get away and this guy was running across the street. So cops were called and the entire incident just made it to where my son would not go outside for anything. Problem #2 Later that summer we had dust bowl type drought. It go so dry that the ground around the pond shrunk way up. Then I turned on the water hose to water the flower bed. The ground got wet and expanded so quickly that it busted a 6 inch gash in the pond!
Thankfully a friend at work had a large liner that he was not using so he gave it to me. So it was without a question that the new pond will be in the back yard. So because our fish were living in a bucket we acted too fast and threw the pond in the ground with out really thinking about it.
So far we have not been very happy with the location of it and we need a much better filter system. So we must figure out how to have a stream with cascading waterfall and either a bog filter or a Skippy filter. I do want something that works.
Here is a few other pics around the pond.
This here is my waterfall right after installation.
This is the overall view of the pond. Don't care much for the green water.
One of my Rose Rocks. Central Oklahoma is one of the very few places where they occur naturally. I got this one while fishing at a lake about 3 miles from my house.
I include some history in my pond. The flat chunk of concrete came from the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, after the Oklahoma City Bombing. The little chunk to the left of it was some debris found in my yard during the May 2013 Tornado Outbreak. The one in the concrete next to that came from my elementary school when they tore it down to build a brand new school. I don't know why but I save stuff like that. Inside the house we also have a piece of the Berlin Wall that my wife got. She was living about a block away from it when they tore it down.
This guy here keeps a watchful eye over my pond. It is a little hard to see but this is my Jesus rock. I got bored one day about a decade ago and found this flat part on this rock and found my rotary tool and free handed it in. It is not the best drawing but this was my first in rock.
