West Annie Street

Our backyard water feature is still in progress, but here are the steps that got us to this point:


First sketches of a water trough and how it might tie into the retaining wall. We had to step down the wall and already had these notches where the level changes happened. It seemed one of those “aha” moments when the thought occurred to put a steel channel spout at the notch above the water trough.





Here’s my first sketch trying to work out how the water circulation would work.





I faxed the sketch to Teresa at Hill Country Water Gardens and she graciously fine tuned it and sent it back to me. I had thought to run the pvc inside the concrete but Teresa’s recommendation was to run it all on the surface for easy access. It definitely cuts down the “oops” factor — concrete is pretty permanent. I had also thought the pump could be behind the retaining wall but it turns out it has to be inside the water and also has an optional filter attached to it.

I especially like my note, “they have a lady who can come out and do this…”






Here are the guys pouring concrete.

On a different note, on the tv show “Bones” there was a great moment when someone refers to concrete as cement and Brennan corrects him, saying no, cement is a component of concrete.

I always want to correct people when they say cement but usually let it go because nobody cares. The guy’s response on the show is exactly what I would expect in real life — annoyance, bewilderment (like, why are you wasting my time) and disgust — well, maybe not that bad.