the pond in progress

You might recall me mentioning that we have a little goldfish pond around the back corner of our garden.  This is what it used to look like.  Notice the thick green scum-colour and the ugly weed on one side.  As much as I wound up loving to garden, I did not love having a fish pond.  I never remembered to feed the poor things, I never wanted to waste the water to refill it, and when it got hot it bloomed with nasty algae.

So the long-term plan for a while has been to drain the pond, cut out the concrete on the bottom, put in dirt and plant something.  This plan began almost two months ago when we got rid of the fish.  I wanted to use the water on the nearby plants, but at the time it just kept raining and I didn't want to waste the water.  In the meantime, guess what!  With no fish, mosquitos love to lay their eggs and grow little larva.  So I had to kill the larva before we finally scooped out all the water with buckets.  Then Tom had to dig out the layer of fish-poo-covered, scummy gravel on the bottom. 

But at last, it looks like this now.  The next steps are to figure out what to do with this pile of rocks, and find out how to safely cut the wires powering the pump and a feature light (it's cemented into the side of the pond so we can't just take them out).  Then the real fun - finding out how we take out the concrete on the bottom without destroying the sides.  Any suggestions?

We have to take out the bottom or at least poke a lot of holes, otherwise when we do get a bit of rain (like never), whatever we plant inside will drown.

I'm not sure what to plant yet, something of a good size.  I keep coming back to some kind of fruit tree - I would LOVE an avocado tree, and there's one type that only gets about 7 feet tall (unlike most that easily grow to 30 feet).  But avocados do need water, you can't let them dry out.

Ah well it looks like it'll be a while before I'm ready to plant anything!