kids and fish ponds

Irma left for Belgium at the beginning of February, and I was quite okay with looking after the kids, they being at boarding school, and only home over week-ends. I had started again on making the hole for my fishpond, as my goldfish were still in my pond at the flat, but I can't leave them there forever, although my tennants loved them, and as I buy their food, didn't mind feeding them.
It was hard going, as once more I encountered a layer of some biggish rocks, and it took some hard bearing and swearing to get them out, but once through that, there was only a lot of small stones to get out, but that was still hard work, and I took it in sessions.
Kiana brought home a friend for the week-end, and as they needed pocket money, I gave them the opportunity to earn some, and deepen the hole. Not one of the two were really big girls, and I could see that they were struggling a bit, not used to some manual slog, but they stuck to it, and by the time I took them back on the Sunday night, my hole was almost ready, and they complained of the blisters on their hands. As I had given them each a pair of garden gloves to work with, I didn't show too much sympathy, just gave them some ointment to rub on.
I intended to plaster the hole out with cement, but Hannes convinced me to first try out a piece of black builder's plastic, that being very thick and strong, as he reckoned that it worked better, as cement-made ponds usually spring a leak if it cracks. So off to the co-op, and it wasn't long before I had the plastic sheet fitted, but I just hated it! It did look a lot better once the pond was filled up, so I left it for the time being, to see what it looked like once I had some plants growing.
I asked Jan to help me with the poles for the roof of the little space where Charmaine and self planted the poles, and he gave our poles one look and asked me why they were so out of line. As it was quite a sore point with me, I just snorted and told him not to worry about the poles, as he was a perfectionist, and looked all set to replant my pole. I had waited so long for the roof to go on, and was not going to let an out of line pole hamper my joy in having a place outside to sit, so after grumbling a bit, he had the poles fixed, and helped me with my temporary roof, that being some thick transparent plastic and shading net above that. I planned to later put up a reed roof, but money being a bitty scarce at the moment, that would have to wait.
I again had a bumper crop of tomatoes, and it seemed that Ronalee was right when she told me that the cherry tomatoes had no natural enemies, as they just ripened beautifully, without a mark on them, while my other ones had to be treated from the moment they started flowering.
The weirdest coloured peaches ever, ripened again on one of Irma's trees. I have never seen the likes of it, as their flesh were cherry red, and they ripened very late in the season. I desperately wanted a tree of that kind, and when small plants appeared beneath the tree, I took some out to try and grow it on my land. Only one of them took, and I was elated!
The top photo shows the pond in the tiny garden of my flat.