Day 3, Monday, June 1, 2026: The Path Forward
We had P2 join us for a 7 am start today. With four builders on the ground, we planned to tackle both the ponds as well as the walking path. The air had a slight chill to it and the sky was mostly overcast, which suited us just fine for the digging operations.
As P2 commenced digging out the dirt from the now de-grassed upper pond, and Y began carving out a winding path, P and D continued to unearth rocks, big and small, as they endeavored to bring the lower pond into a good-looking bean-worthy shape. We were pleasantly surprised that the upper and lower ponds happened to have to come out shaped like diagonally opposite beans. As days went on however, it was interesting to see both the upper, though more noticeably the lower pond continued to expand beyond the sizes that we had initially thought of.
We agreed that the path would need to be lowered to make for a comfortable step off of the patio, though we would also need to insert a middle step to make the current step level with the top one.
We strategized how to adequately dig out the pond depth to accommodate the rocks and plants. In the afternoon shift starting about 4:15pm, Y continued to make progress with a trowel alternating with a shovel. P’s tool of the day was pick-axe, and D continued to shuffle between a shovel and other gear in his tool shed to mend the prior day’s damaged goods. Other than that, as P said it, we did a lot of digging and digging and digging! Tav would have loved joining us to help dig today. D ended the day by helping out Y finish up the initial path, while P dug on over at the big pond. Overall, we were quite pleased with the progress we made.
