Day 23, Sunday, June 21, 2026: The Lower Waterfall flow is perfect!
We began the day by checking if the rock substitution and more foam had fixed our waterfall. It had indeed, and just in time for Father’s Day – we were chuffed!
Next, the group had a planning session to discuss where the next few expansions would take place. D and P plan to have an excavator here on Monday to build out the East end of the wall by the garden edge. At the start of this project, we had placed some blocks and filled the area in with dirt. Now, we want the blocks covered and the area better secured since we plan to have some rock steps as well there. D and P took E and Y around to the East-side tree terrace to walk them through this plan.
Next, under D’s supervision, P and Y rolled out the large log from the garden area to outside the kitchen window. We heard it didn’t really go with the Japanese-inspired garden aesthetic!
Y placed another rock face plant and P continued to clean up the liner by the stream edge. And just like that, it was time for Sunday brunch and the end of the morning shift!
The crew took a break in the day and resumed the shift around 4:15 pm after spending some time researching how to lay down a path and such details. First stop was D’s favorite store – Home Depot! We wanted to buy some Allan blocks or similar blocks to place around the bottom step of the patio, as a part of our path. After looking at a couple, we settled on a third one of the rumbled variety in grayish color that would match the slate we got for our path. We selected 18 (total 360 lbs) and a couple sandbags (total 110 lbs) that P and Y lugged on the cart, into the car and out to the garden site. These were also just within the weight bearing load of the car we drove in!
When we came back home, P started working on placing the blocks around the area where we were going to place them. P and Y worked on digging out the hard packed dirt in this area and placing the rocks leveled and appropriately distance relative to the existing bottom step.
We retired for dinner at about 7:30. We had a great Father’s Day special meal thanks to E!
After dinner, P went right back to the garden to use the rest of the weekend time he had before his weekday work started and made some good progress with the step. P also did a circuit of the garden to check whether we were losing any water visibly in the pipe joints since we seem to have lost a couple inches of level in the lower pond again, but he couldn’t find any obvious breaks. We’ll have to keep an eye and figure out whether it’s truly evaporation or a leak that’s preventing water from going onto the bog filter and now our new plants.
While we await our bridge before raising the ground near the bottom pond or planting our Japanese Maple, our main tasks will be to start building the garden path using the tumbled San Juan blue slate rocks we’d gotten some days ago, and to finish up the eastern wall by the garden’s edge. Time to wrap up phase 1 is approaching, and there’s a lot of planting to do! We’ll have more updates tomorrow!