Pond life - Plants arrived!

The Expert has arrived from Bolzano with his team of gardners and a trailer full of plants. It's all very exciting: the little aquatic plants have to find a cool shady place where they can live in tanks of water whilst they wait for the pond to be made ready. The other plants sit in buckets and troughs of water of varying depths depending on their preferred habitat. I am most keen to see the water lillies - surely these are the whole point of the pond! There is a pink one already coming into flower.

The Expert then goes off to examine the various types of earth available in the locality and choose which is best for planting. He has brought big rolls of grey thick felt-like fabric which I presume is to put on top of the liner before dumping on the soil.

It has never stopped raining in the past couple of weeks so the pond is half full of dirty water which we are having to pump out before refilling with clean water from the well. The water sample is still at Gualdo Todino being tested and we all hope that they have not found anything too nasty in it. So tomorrow the work starts in earnest.

Y