Pond Project Day... Whatever, I Cleaned the Ledge

I've taken a lot of pictures in the past few days, not all of the pond project. Since circumstances have me leaving for Maryland tomorrow, I'll have 2-3 weeks of not who-knows-what, but building a brick fire pit and experimenting in the kitchen are definitely going to be on my list of activities. So, today, I'm going to show you what I did today, and for the next few days after that, I'll be showing you what I did a few days ago.

First, I set up the tripod and took a picture from the exact same spot every time I needed a break. Overlooking both ponds is a massive flat-topped boulder, which I needed to clean off to make room to work on dredging - which won't start until next month, apparently. The following photos will be arranged into a slideshow in my next pond project video on BitChute:

This is actually what I did yesterday, and the next photo shows what it looked like before I started today. The all-night rain washed a lot of the dirt off the area that I removed the moss and sticks from:

...and I forgot to take a picture before removing the rest of that willow stump with the chainsaw. Stupid me. However, with that mess out of the way, I was able to simply sweep most of the remaining sticks into the wheelbarrow below:

After that, I started ripping up the huge, dense mat of roots beneath the moss:

This mat was so dense and tenacious that, and I'm not kidding, it actually grew into the ledge and split the rock, resulting in some wafer-thin pieces above the mat:

I say "wafer-thin" only because they are far too thin and fragile to be used as part of a walkway or any other application where they would need to support substantial weight, but they are still fairly thick:

The next few photos show a wet depression at the edge of the yard, which I want to fill in. So far, I've been filling it in with the contents of the lower pond whenever I clean that out, as well as grass clippings from mowing the lawn:

I never took a picture of the whole mat, rolled up, before I removed it (regrettably, it was quite impressive), but here's the result:

The mat was far too heavy to move all at once, and too large to fit in the wheelbarrow unless I cut it up into pieces - which I did with an axe. All three filled the wheelbarrow, and were probably heavier than I am. They made a substantial contribution to filling in the depression, even though it doesn't look like much:

The view from up here is quite nice:

As is the view from down below:

After the next rainstorm washes of the ledge, it will be nice enough to move a table and a couple of chairs up there; you know, for evening wine tasting after a hard day's work. However, that won't happen until after the pond is dredged, which is the very next thing I'll do here. As I said earlier, however, that won't be until next month.