Hi my experience has been just the opposite .lol I'm an aquarium freak so built a pond not as a water garden but a place to store rainwater for my fish tanks . You can build an entire pond for half a collection of rain barrels. But followed this path Have mosquitoes get a few fish. herons ate the fish. Get a few plants for fish to hide . Plants consumed the entire storage area lol. Obviously if you have fish and plants in it you can't draw all the water. so end up filling with the garden hose anyway. Built this in 1982 still have no filtraation or pumps except for a portable to remove water for irrigation. Got another "lesson this winter. "florida is not necessarily warm enough to maintain tropical fish."lol Wiped out the whole stock lol First time in all those years !!! BTW still had to add a couple of "rainbarrels " because the water is not clean enough for aquariums. Which was the original purpose lol One thing that has proved invaluable . Don't have to hide this rain barrel as it's far better looking than the rest of my garden lol. The down spout connection does make it self cleaning UNLESS you get a 30 inch rain .Then the fish move to better neighborhoods !! At the opposite what is REALLy needed is a way to make it rain on order . Oh well Has been a lot of fun over the years but still nowhere near the "Perfect" setup. gary

#1) Always know exactly where the pipe from the skimmer to the filterbox is buried. While putting the netting frame up, I had to drive stakes in the ground. I found the pipe. #2) DON'T add anything to the pond unless you are absolutely sure you want them. Not that they are a bad choice, but I let husband add a 'few' minnows to the pond. That was a year ago and I still have 3 I've never been able to catch. I didn't know they could get that big. #3) DO NOT wear a $2000 hearing aid while IN the pond. I slipped and almost went under. Fortunately, I managed to keep my head above the water although I will never know how I managed that. I can't hear much without it, but I don't care. Besides, I can 'hear' my goldies just fine. They do fin sign language by nibbling and swimming all around me. I am sure I will think of more later, but those are my top three mishaps. Anyone else?

Hope the birds were safely rescued! Our siding person set off ours taking off the old stuff- oops. Police arrived and gave them a bit of a hard time til they reached us. Double oops! Then I was watching our robins getting ready to fledge and they fledged into the house. Found 2 easily but the third one was shy. I finally snagged the last one. I have a great video of the robins fledging.

You ladies are hilarious! Just left calloways and their roses were just in horrible shape I was so disappointed. They are also so expensive and since I need so many they wouldn't be feasible anyhow. I did see peach drift and they look so good even without blooms. I'm going to assume there is no fragrance?