I have a biosphere in my backyard. It’s like a miniature nature preserve, like a natural paradise. I’m proud of it. It gives me comfort and solace.
The fish pond with the overhanging Willow and the deep green of the Groovy Nook with its small ponds back in the corner and the Hackberries and the big Pecan and the brown cedar fence surrounding it all are the main elements. And the Bog Filter.
The Bog Filter is the heart and soul of this little paradise. Here the water from the pond circulates up thru the small pebbles where the microbes live and do their work. They transform the waste products of the fish people into plant food for the plant people. Without this it would just be a normal backyard: no fish, no water plants, no invisible microbes, no dragonflies, no fairies, no elves and no raccoons prowling around at night.
Ok, I made up the part about the fairies and elves but the raccoons are real. They love the water, wash their food in the water, go swimming in the water and like to watch the fish gliding silently by, orange and white, among the Hydrilla. Sometimes they try to catch them.
One Spring I discovered frogs. They miraculously appeared in the pool. They had never been there before. Where did they come from? Just hopped in from some other pond? Fell out of the sky? That’s a myth actually, frogs falling from the sky. I never figured it out but there they were singing among the toads, who have always been here, singing away in their primordial Springtime procreation ritual.
Raccoons are predators and they have been in this neighborhood since before this was a neighborhood; their ancestors go way back. They found the frogs to be a tasty treat and actively hunted them. So active was their hunting that they tore a hole in the supposedly impervious bog filter liner looking for their hideout.
The point of the story is this: the frogs disappeared and the bog filter started leaking. Trouble in Paradise. Oh well, I managed to patch it up with super sticky underwater repair tape. I said a prayer for the extinct frogs. All good. Or so I thought.
What I didn’t know was that underground the Willow and the Hackberry on either side of the bog filter had somehow sensed an ample source of water and sent out their scouts to investigate. Eventually major roots invaded right through the supposedly impervious bog filter liner and started drinking yummy bog filter water and growing bigger and bigger.
Meanwhile the Elephant Ears, who were doing quite well indeed inside the bog filter, had sent off their underground rootlets and created a matrix, a network, a carpet really of rhizomes searching for the source of water inside the PVC pipes lying at the bottom of the gravel where they injected pool water into the bog filter. They invaded the pipes and eventually the water completely stopped flowing from most of them.
Further excitement was provided by my amateur masonry skills which hadn’t included reinforcing the concrete block walls of the bog filter and they began to expand outward with all the pressure of the water and gravel bearing on them. The liner, instead of overlapping the top of the wall, began slipping inside the enclosure and water started leaking over the top. Alarmed, I wrapped stainless steel cables around the outside of the enclosure, cinched it down and lowered the water level the best I could. All good. More or less.
This was the state of affairs when I finally realized that the bog filter needed a complete rebuild. It was leaking and leaning, and had some very mysterious problems underground. Not to mention the fact that it was only filtering at about 10% capacity.
How to do it was the problem. How indeed. The five cubic yards of pea gravel that I originally shoveled in there weighed about 6 tons and was now slimy and gooey from 12 years of filtering fish poo. I agonized over this knowing that it had to be done but not having a clear plan of how to do it.
Actually I had several plans hatched over many sleepless nights but none of them were practical, affordable and doable with my sore back and limited resources. I felt like the Backyard Paradise was in peril. I felt like my lifestyle was in peril. I felt like my sanity was in peril to be honest with you. The Nature Pool that I dove into head first when I needed the baptismal experience was under threat.
It was at that moment that my buddy Clayton showed up. Check him out on Instagram: Clayton @buildswithclay. He’s been learning how to build cob houses and other kinds of natural construction for the past 5 years and stopped by his old haunts in San Antonio on his way to Montana. I don’t know how to explain this except to say it was an answer to my prayers. More like begging actually. Something I’ve been doing alot of. Help! I had a whole list of requests. Anyways I asked him if he wanted to do a project with me. He accepted.
The next part of the story is a lot of pictures and explanations. I hope you enjoy it. We finished in one week what I thought would take months. We came in $10,000 below what the pros were asking for tearing it all down and rebuilding it. It looks great, it feels great and it doesn’t leak.
Elephant Ear (Colocasia esculenta) covering the bog filter before renovation. It was beautiful but they completely dominated everything. They’re edible if prepared properly otherwise forget about it.
And the peaceful fish pond. My Nature Pool.
Here’s the Bog Filter with all the Elephant Ear chopped down, ready to excavate.
Oh yeah. Fun!
Clayton doing all the hard work.
Building a mountain of goopy gravel.
Is there no end to this?
Pipe clogged with roots and gravel.
Digging out the big roots that came thru the supposedly impermeable liner. There was a bunch of them.
All cleaned out. Ready to rebuild.
Gravel delivery!
Laying down new liner and clean pipes. Yeah, now we’re getting somewhere.
Planting water plants in the new gravel. That’s a few tons of pea gravel wheelbarrowed in there.
Pennywort and the Mints, the Horse Tail and the Japanese Iris that I picked up from the nursery, the Pickerel Weed transplanted from the fish pond, the Chinese Lizard Tail and Blue Eyed Grass also from the nursery all found a new home here.
And ta da it’s done. Harmony restored. Everything in order. I’m so happy. Thank you Clayton. Thank you God.
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