Pond Hockey

Hi All,

Our pond has become so popular as a pond hockey venue that we thought that you should see a short snippet of the evolution of the site.

First is a shot of the pond in summer that I am sure most of the regular readers are familiar with.

This photo shows our fantastic young next door neighbours Suzanne and James who early in 2010 started clearing the snow off the frozen pond but due to many difficulties with weather nobody got to skate on it.

But this year the weather has been more favourable and a team of youngsters ( younger than us anyway) led by across the road neighbour Andrew Pyne took on the challenge to clear the snow, attempted to scrape the ice smooth and make use of it.

After much work the team managed not only to smooth the ice but start to improve it by scraping and flooding with water overnight to provide an improved playing surface.

Andrew (with a significant amount of help from dad Doug) has been the lead in the work and is seen here watering down.

The surface continues to improve and is flooded after use most days.

Then on Friday mother nature decided to take a hand and dumped 20+ cm of snow on the area in what from our Aussie point of view can only be described as close to a white out.

Not to be daunted our team arrived on Saturday complete with snow blower to begin restoration. As you can see a significant amount of snow had to be moved.

By Sunday morning, after what can only be described as a heroic effort by Doug and Andrew on Saturday the pond was back to playable standard and this shot was taken only two hours ago.

 

All the youngsters and some of the not so young appear to enjoy the pond and we are so pleased to be able to help facilitate all the fun. 

Tonight (Sunday 23rd) we have a wind chill warning for tonight and tomorrow morning of lower than -38C  so there is not much doubt that the surface will stay solid.

We wish all the best to our friends and family at home who are caught up in the flood crisis or its consequences.

Please stay safe and well.

Love Bev and Ross