Water Features

The Yellow Cottage Homestead

The Yellow Cottage Homestead has been sold, and the sale has now closed. With it closes another chapter of our lives, as we prepare to begin the next one, touring the country full-time in a luxury motorhome. Follow the new Sinclair Trails blog to see pictures and information from our new adventure.

With the closing of the house, I am also closing down this blog. It will remain permanently for future reference, but I don’t plan any further posts after this one. (Of course, I may decide to follow up later, so you never know.)

I thought I’d conclude this blog with a guided tour around the homestead.

Let’s start from the logical place, the driveway into the property:

Driveway and house

The front lawn and house:

Front lawn and house

Going around the back; the deck, gazebo, and gardens, with a glimpse of the swimming pool:

Deck, gazebo, gardens

Looking to the right, the upper falls pond:

Upper falls pond

Continuing on down the path, looking back at the house, deck, gazebo, and bird feeders off to the right:

House, deck, gazebo, bird feeders

Nearby, the stream leading from the upper falls, and one of its two stone bridges:

Stream and stone bridge

After crossing the bridge, looking over the stream towards the cat house:

Stream, stone bridge, cat house

Further down the path, the small pond, and cat house:

Small pond, cat house

A closer look at the cat house:

Cat house

The nearby fountain garden:

Fountain garden

Behind the fountain garden are flowerbeds:

Flowerbeds

Flowerbeds

The white gazebo:

White gazebo

A peek back at the gazebo through the arbor into the field:

Arbor

Apple trees in the field:

Apple trees in field

Arbor and the pond deck:

Arbor and pond deck

On the pond deck, with a view of the pond:

Pond deck and pond

A view from the pond deck of the ducks coming to see me:

Ducks in the pond

Ducks in the pond

From below the pond deck:

Ducks in the pond

Over the other side of the pond, with the duck house, and the pond deck in the background:

Duck house and ducks in the pond

Ducks in the pond:

Ducks in the pond

A weeping willow by the path from the duck house:

Weeping willow

Standing at the end of the duck house path, looking at the brown gazebo and chicken coop:

Brown gazebo and chicken coop

The new and old chicken coops across the back lawn:

New and old chicken coops

Chickens in their run:

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

Beyond the chicken runs, the veggie garden:

Veggie garden

The berry cage part of the veggie garden:

Berry cage

The greenhouse behind the berry cage:

Greenhouse

The hoop house next to the veggie garden:

Hoop house

Beyond the greenhouse and hoop house, the beehives and bee shed:

Beehives and bee shed

Near the beehives:

Beehives

I hope you enjoyed this tour of the homestead, and the many blog posts over the years. Thank you for reading, and all the nice comments.

Feel free to follow my personal posts on my Dejus blog, and the new Sinclair Trails blog of our RV adventures.

Converting the fountain into a garden, part 1

One of the features of our homestead is a fountain with a flower-girl statue, that was added by a previous owner.

Here’s a GIF of the fountain from 2014:

Fountain GIF

However, we rarely ran the fountain, as it tended to spray water outside the pool, and leaked, so we had to keep topping it up. Plus, after a few years the electrical supply became unreliable, popping the GFCI increasingly frequently. And without running the fountain, the pool became a breeding ground of mosquitos and such.

So, we decided to replace the pool with a garden.

Here’s the pump in the base of the fountain, which I’ve disconnected:

Pump

I had the idea of using the fountain tube to water plants in the middle basin of the fountain, so I temporarily connected a hose to check that that would be feasible:

Hose

Yep; here’s a GIF of the fountain working from that hose:

Fountain GIF

That basin has a drain hole, so it won’t fill up with water when we put soil and plants there (the drain is still plugged in that GIF).

So, after checking that, the next step was to add a new tap for irrigation tubing to the fountain. I could have connected to the existing tap next to the fountain, but I wanted to have the tubing enter the fountain from the back, where it wouldn’t be visible from the house or deck. The garden to the right of the fountain doesn’t already have a tap, so I wanted to add one.

I knew from a previous plumbing project that there is a pipe under that garden. Here’s a picture from 2015 of an overly complex piping system I added for the flowerbeds (the tap on the left is to attach a water timer and short hose to the nearby female port, enabling timed watering, with a bypass valve too). The pipe at the top goes under the garden next to the fountain:

Flowerbed plumbing

Here’s that location now; you can see the short white hose, though there isn’t a timer connected currently:

Flowerbed plumbing

When I dug down in the garden next to the fountain, I found the pipe in the expected location:

Pipe

I turned off the garden water supply, then cut the pipe (a little water drained out):

Cut pipe

Then I added a tap:

Added tap

The next day (allowing time for the adhesive to cure) I turned the water back on, checked for leaks, then filled the hole:

Filled hole

The next step was to drill a hole through the base of the fountain wall, so I could have the irrigation tubing tidily go through the wall rather than over it. To do that, I previously purchased a rather large 1 inch by 16 inch masonry drill bit:

1 inch by 16 inch drill bit

Here’s the drill bit in my driver:

Drill bit in driver

Though after a while I switched to a dedicated drill. It took over an hour to get through the concrete-filled block of the wall:

Drilling

Drilling

The hole:

Hole

Then I added an irrigation pipe from the new tap through the hole:

Irrigation pipe

Inside the fountain pool, I added a T-junction to the irrigation pipe, with one fork going to the fountain tubing, the other for sprinkler emitters for the bottom level:

Irrigation pipe

That done, I brought several loads of scoria to add at the bottom as a drainage layer:

Dumping scoria

Thusly:

Scoria

We inherited a large pile of scoria over near the beehives; still lots left:

Scoria

Then I did a couple loads of soil:

Dirt

Starting the soil layer:

Soil layer

Soil layer

That’s all I had time and energy for. I will probably finish adding the soil next weekend, weather permitting.

It was quite a workout; don’t need a gym when you have a homestead!

Activity

Fountain garden stream

Now that the overnight temperatures are (mostly) above freezing, I’ve turned on the garden water, which means I could also turn on the pump in the small pond for the stream next to the fountain garden. It needs the water to be on to top it up via an automatic filler valve.

Here is the small pond; you can see the pump underwater, and filler valve on the edge (I might be modifying that soon):

Small pond

Going upstream a bit, the lower stone bridge:

Lower part of stream

Looking downstream, with the upper stone bridge in the foreground, the lower bridge barely visible through the tree, and the cat house in the background:

Stream and cat house

A couple more shots of the upper bridge:

Bridge

Bridge

Just beyond the bridge:

Stream

A GIF of the upper stream cascade (captured from a video):

GIF of stream cascade

And a closer GIF of the cascade (captured from a Live Photo):

GIF of stream cascade

A GIF of the upper falls pond, where the pump pipe ends with bubbling water:

GIF of upper falls pond

A static photo of the upper falls pond:

Upper falls pond

I hope you enjoyed this look at the stream. I’ll do the big pond waterfall in the future.