My Easiest Pond Protection Ever!

When I worked on the pond this spring to fix some leaks, it got quite a bit smaller. I knew this would help once fall came, as keeping the leaves out of the water had been so difficult in past years (and my failure to do so last year led to the pond's death, which prompted the remake).

This year though was the easiest ever. It literally took me five minutes!

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I use relatively inexpensive bird netting to cover the pond -- instead of more durable (expensive) pond nets. In past years I had to connect two pieces of bird netting together to get the entire pond covered. This was not east to do and not very effective:

• Laying the netting on the lawn was tricky
• Walking on it even more so as it gets caught on your shoes' slightest rough spot
• Connecting it together with zip ties took some effort and time
• There were still holes in this seam where leaves could get in if things went badly
• Picking it up off the lawn involved much snagging, as it seems there was always a branch or two that I missed

So in past years this was a task that was not fun and took at least 30 minutes or more. Plus it wasn't reliable.

This year though...

...One piece of netting, no need to lay it out on the ground. I asked my neighbor to come help me since he was outside, but I could have easily done this myself -- I was surprised at how easy it was. (Doing it myself would have added maybe a minute to the task)

I used the styrofoam floats to keep the net out of the water again:

I did this a few years ago and it was fairly effective, but this year it's working even better since there is less room for the netting to sag.

(There are rocks holding down the edges of the netting)

Plenty of leaves are down now...

...but there are still some up there:

Once they've all dropped and I've raked a bit I can pull the netting off -- which is going to be much easier now too.

Keeping the leaves out was always a chore, but this year it was almost fun!

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