Finally was able to get the pond going. Though I probably could have gotten it started about two months ago. I keep kicking myself not doing a lot of this in April. The weather was too nice, but it woud have been good to get a lot of these outside chores done.Oh well it is done now and things should still work out. The pond was drained and cleaned, though probably not as through has last year. It was enough to get any visible algae off and things seem to go smoother that last year as well. Not as many stopped to clean out the intake on the pump. So maybe what I did last year wasn't so bad.
One thing I did screw up though was winterizing the water lilies. If you are going to keep them in a bucket of water in the basement. Be sure you keep water in the bucket. That was the main mistake, which pretty much killed off the water lilies. So I went and spent about $70 on a pair of lilies one yellow and the other white. Was able to get three plants out it so it wasn't so bad for two pots. Though not much to look at now but with any luck they will hopefully get me at least one or two flowers.
Here are a couple pictures I took while I was filling the pond.
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