A view of the whole back section of the yard just before we bought it. You can see the whole backyard was overgrown with weeds and underbrush! The "pond" is completely filled in with dirt, to the immediate left, under all that ivy. This picture is from July 17, 2000 ...

Here's a picture of the same area from March 2001 - I was clearing it to plant a small vegetable garden here. After a couple weekends of ripping out the ivy and weeds, I discovered there were poured concrete "borders" I placed some rocks on the "border" and piled up dirt inside it for a flower garden.

Here's a closer view of the small rock garden I created on the left corner of the cement pond in April 2001. You can see the concrete "borders" in this picture.

We bought the house from Bob, and he'd owned the house for 7 years, but the previous owner's name was Nancy. As we have been there nearly 2 years now, that meant the pond was nearly 10 years old. Our next-door neighbor Dan (who moved away in Nov 2000) had told me that Nancy had built a small pond there, but that she didn't put a pump in and it was stagnant. The neighbors complained and became a nuisance, so she had someone come in with an air hammer and had it broken up, or filled it in (the story was kind of confused there).

I spoke to a neighbor at a block party October 2002 and she said she'd been friends with "Nancy" (the owner of our house when the pond was built) - she said the pond was about 20 years old!

Shady as the yard is, it turned out one corner of the garden near the brick path was a small, sunny spot. So - I planted 4 tomato plants, but when I drove the stakes in, I hit bottom!
By the way - the first pic was from May 5, the bottom July 7 2001

After one rainy week the whole garden flooded and was very damp and marshy - tho neighbor Dan had moved away, I started thinking that maybe he hadn't quite told me the truth. with all the flooding I was convinced the bottom of the pond was intact.
We actually got some very tasty tomatoes that year, but it really wasn't enough sun for them to thrive.

In mid April 2002, I dug up a small corner of pond to get an idea of how deep it was (you can see the concrete wall of the pond) - I found it was more like a wading pool - 11-12 inches deep!

These picture taken with an Olympus C-2000 Digital camera,
then cropped/compressed for internet use
(These pictures have been updated as of May 6th ...)