The octagonal pond underway
As I expected, not much progress has taken place since I increased my hours in the day job. I am very busy with my tutoring as well. However, today was not a working day, and the weather forecast was for a mild but not wet day, so I picked up my cement-mixing trowel and pounced. I had already made my form for the outside edge, and so all I had to do was to lay it out in the right place, adjust the angles and get the height right. It was no surprise to me that I found this a very difficult job, especially getting the form level. In the end I gave up, and decided to get the edge in the right place first, and then adjust its height with some extra mortar until it was level all the way round. So far I have done three out of eight edges.
The start of the edging for the octagonal pond
I used concrete blocks because they made it easy to get the edge the same width all the way round and meant I did not have to make up much mortar. I have used about 11 litres so far, which is less than I have usually needed for a 600mm paving slab. After photographing my handiwork, I put a tarpaulin over the top to protect it from frost. If the weather is favourable, I will attempt to finish it on Sunday.