From Pool To Pond

Many of my happiest childhood memories have been in my pool. For countless Summers I spent most of my day swimming and on a less bright note, cleaning it. For the past three years my brother and I have been responsible for cleaning it, which means vacuuming the bottom every other day, every week we would have to scrub the sides down and once or twice a day, dependant on whether we were having people over or not, skim the surface for bugs and leaves. We would also have to get it ready in the late Spring after it was warm enough. We would uncover it and then would have to wash it off, and hang it in between two trees to let it dry. Then we got to work on the pool which was disguisting. It would literally be black, so we basically dump a crap load of pool shock into the water then a couple of days later would start the vacuuming and scrubbing process which took a few days of our time.

This year when we opened up the pool we found that it had almost no water in it, which is a really bad thing. During the Winter, the pool liner had come completely off and thus we were met with and ultimatum. Do we spend a thousand bucks and have to do a lot of manual labor to basically make a new pool or do we just rip it out of the ground and go from there. We saddly decided that our pool was to be made into a pond, so now we have a four foot hole in the ground, not quite deep enough to bury someone in. Now over the weekend we are planning on leveling out the shallow end with sand and then are going to buy a pond liner to place in the hole. We are lowering our deck a couple of feet and building stairs from the upper deck to the lower one. Then we are lining the edge of the deck with limestone that we got for freakishly cheap from the quarry over by my house. We will then build ledges all around the hole for plants to sit on and then we will fill it with water and hope it works. Next step is to add the fishies and plants and Hurray!!! we have a pond.

I am not sure whether to be sad or relieved by the passing of my pool. I have had so many good memories in it though i almost drown in it twice. On a happier note, I won't have to do any pool cleaning anymore and my mom is also happy because she has always wanted a pond. She said that no matter what we said, the pool was going to be taken down after we move out anyways. So all in all I guess now I just have two Summers less to spend with my pool. =(