Water feature

It's getting real hot and summery and last week I finally ordered the only pond I could find online which was not too small and remotely did resemble a pond shape. A couple of days later, the hugest box so far arrived at the door, and in it the molded plastic pond.

Took me 10 minutes just to fold the carton and put it away

Although the garden is not so small, the box and the pond occupied a whole lot of space suddenly so I felt real cramped after having taken out the pond from the box.

It only came in black... why not blue?

So I started digging and realized soon that the amount of dirt excavated would be huge, and that I had to first get rid of the small hill left over from the previous construction. I had postponed it for too long so I got to work. Most of the dirt I moved to the long strip near the gate, where the lilac and the jasmine are, and filled the bottom part of the slope so it is not a void anymore, and the slope seems smaller. The rest of the dirt I used to fill in the rest of the bed closest to the house (if it was nice and dark top soil) or to fill in the path nearest the house which I was not so happy with before as it was too low and tilted a bit (I used mostly clay chunks to do that). I also moved some top soil to the backyard and made a mini bed at the bottom because the soil originally under there was pretty hard.
Then the digging could commence, and before long I had come halfway.

note that the hill is mostly gone and the bed and path closest are full

I put the pond in the hole and called it a day. The next day I finished digging the hole down to same approximate size and shape as the pond mold.

Not too shabby if I may say so myself

Filled the bottom with river sand and started the never ending task of making the bottom horizontal. It took many many many tries but I finally got it.

Like a glove

I started filling a bit of water to keep it down and stable while pouring dirt under the mold from the sides. And the first to visit the pond and start wondering was of course Tora. He stared into the water as if asking himself who that gorgeous cat in the pond was.... or maybe he was just thirsty.

Curious cat

Other than Tora, just a few minutes after the "pond" had some water in it, I was visited by a water skipper bug.

Jesus bug, near the rounded edge

While filling in dirt from the sides, unavoidably some clay fell in the water in the corners of the pond and dissolved. I assume something like a larvae was laying there dormant and woke up when in water. Whatever it was, it looked kind of like a shrimp, and kind of swam and seemed to enjoy itself for a couple of hours in the water till it got dark when I last checked.

near the center... no idea what kind of animal

Anyway, I filled in as much dirt as I could and filled in a bit more water, and cleaned up the area around the pond.

pond in place. Now just wait for the frogs and the dragonflies to come

I am supposed to wait about a week till it settles so to say, and then fill in more water. Eventually I will plant some water plants around it and maybe pour some stones near its edges. But even without those features it already kind of completes the garden image...

Overview of the garden so far

Next week hopefully I can prepare the soil at the backyard second level so that the week after that I can move the melons and japumpkins (kabocha) there. The seedlings are still small and growing in the nursery.

Tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, melon, kabocha, cucumber and peanuts