
NDM's dream of a real koi pond have finally come to fruition. Four feet deep with a waterfall and a stream, the deed is done.

As many home improvements do, this one began with spray paint.

Here I am pretending to help dig the pond. In reality it turns out that I actually could have -- even four feet down there is nothing underneath the Saint Augustine grass but sand.

I liked the pond well enough as a simple quarry in our front yard, but we had to press on.

It took about two weeks from start to unlandscaped finish.

The top of the waterfall gives us a nice view over our HOA battlements.

Up close it still looks like a bit like construction zone, and it will clearly take us some time to naturalize in the pond's margins.

We have seven small koi in the pond right now. After a week acclimating they are just beginning to feel confident enough to show themselves.

The fantail makes it really obvious that these things are basically trumped-up goldfish.

So far we seem to have one day-blooming and one night-blooming pad. We'll see how many water plants we can stuff in there once the pond gets more established.