Pond--First Attempt
Terri has been dreaming and scheming a pond in our back yard for some time, inspired in part by ones like this one owned by a friend of ours:
One day, she noticed that our next door neighbor had brought his company's excavator home for a little yard work, so she asked him if he'd be willing to dig a little hole for us. Chris being the nice guy he is, agreed, so the next morning he set about to play around in our back yard. Terri had lined out where she wanted her pond with a length of white garden hose, and Chris was excellent about following it, as well as my instructions to leave a shelf around the outside. I only had to clean it up a little with a shovel.
Okay, so why "first attempt"?
Well, we also want to put up a fence for privacy and dog containment, and a survey is both prudent and required. We've had trouble getting surveyors to come out, they're all busy on larger projects and have to squeeze our small job in somehow. Chris had just had our common lot line surveyed, and suggested we use his surveyor to do our other line. Wonder of wonders, they were actually able to come out and do so after only a couple weeks of phone tag. This is what they found:
Yep, the lot line runs right over the new pond. I guess we can actually call it a pond, too, since at one point I had the hole covered over with the tarp, and after a heavy rain found it at the bottom filled with about 4" of water. So technically, it has actually been a pond, for about a week. Yes, we have to fill it back in, but the news is not all bad, we haven't actually lost any area of our property. Remember that I said that Chris had the other line surveyed? Here's what they found:
That's on the other side of the trees we thought formed the corner (2nd shot, the first is looking up the line to the side street). So basically, what we "lost" on one line we "gained" on the other over what we thought we had. Had we known this, we'd have built my shed further back in the corner (it has to be at least 30' away from our lot line). And don't feel bad for Chris and April, either, their other lot line is also further over. Feel bad for Mike and Gina on their other side (Mike's response: "You mean I've been mowing your yard all this time, Chris?"). But basically, what it comes down to is this: Don't let your kids pull up lot line markers and play with them like swords, because twenty years later all the new owners will be trying to live with your best guess of where the property lines are. Especially if their angle to the street is a lot more than your guess.
Oh, and the pond? We made another one, just further over. Don't you wish it could have been just as easy as hooking the edge of the hole with the bucket of the excavator and drag it over like they do in the cartoons? :^)