Greetings everyone!
My name is Clayton and I hail from the east Texas piney woods about an hour and some change outside of Houston. I'm new here and haven't even scratched the scratch when it comes to reading through archived articles and searching through old posts, but I came here to listen and learn from y'all gurus.
My wife and I live on almost 6 acres that is mostly wooded. There is section of our cleared, sodded, yard right around the house area in which we lost some large trees that opened up a relatively sunny area behind the house that is visible from our patio and common area windows. I've always been a nature lover and have tried to maintain a native and natural habitat on my property for wildlife. I do a lot of nature photography as a hobby and think having surface water on our property will encourage local species to visit and/or stay. My father has a couple of large tanks on his property in the hill country and I think time spent there really caused me to catch the "pond bug" so to speak.
I don't know much about where to start and the more I read, the more confusion and questions bubble up. That being said, I'm committed to creating a small pond in this area of my yard to use not only for aesthetics, but also/primarily for a wildlife habitat. I'd like to learn not only about the process (and hopefully some tribal knowledge about what NOT to do so I can avoid learning some of those the hard way), but how best to develop those ecosystems and maintain them over time. I also would like to encourage bird activity around the edges of the pond, so I'm hoping to pick up some pointers there as well.
The overall shape/dimensions, depth, etc. are still pretty much greenfield. I'm only limited by the space I have to work with... which isn't huge. I'm hoping my time here with y'all will positively shape the direction of this project.
I am looking forward to starting this journey and learning as much as I can along the way... and hopefully be about to contribute and help others in the future.
Cheers!
/clayton
