Hey there, Deborah. I still have no ice on my pond and it is two weeks since you posted last. Your weather leads ours so maybe your water has frozen since then. I thought I would add a comment or two. The Barley straw ball is not going to do anything to keep the ice open. It will just freeze in place. The tennis balls might work but I always found them on the bottom after they broke open and sank at the first hard freeze that lasted long enough to close the ice. They hold up just fine when you are hitting them around in hot weather but cold makes them brittle. You need something that can be compressed like an inflatable pillow tethered to the bottom so it stays in place. Ping pong balls work if you don't mind the dents that appear. You need to confine them to a small space so there is not a lot of water between them.If the ice gets thicker than the diameter of the ping pong ball the hole will close up anyway. I tried to keep a pond the same size as yours open all winter with a heater and wound up with a heavy frost layer on everything around the pond. It looked like the worlds heaviest fog. I wound up removing the fish on Christmas day. What a mess. I kept the fish in the garage in the winter after that until I could dig a bigger pond a couple of years later. Horton's wood cover sounds like it could be a lot safer than a plastic sheet. The potential problem I see would be if the wind could lift it up. A cement block would solve that problem. There have been a number of threads on keeping the frogs alive during the winter. Lots of failures too. I haven't tried because frogs don't manage to get to my pond. However, after reading many threads on the subject I think I can suggest a solution to the problem in the future. By the way, this is not my solution, it is suggested by someone else who has a web site elsewhere. I just can't remember where it is. An area close to the pond should have a hole dug 12 to 18 inches deep that is backfilled with loose compost or chopped dried leaves or even sand. The frogs will go to the bottom of this backfill and hibernate until spring. Material such as quilt batting can strangle or suffocate the froggie as it shifts around. Otherwise, if you have a properly maintained garden area, the frog will be just as happy there since it would be easy to dig itself in. Freezing does not harm a frog. They produce their own anti-freeze. They are killed by dehydration. I once found the dissicated remains of three frogs who made the mistake of using a bag of lime in which to hibernate. I have also found a seemingly dead frog in the bottom of a ball of soil in a flower pot that broke. I left the ball of dirt in the sun frog side down and as it thawed the frog thawed too. It found a new spot to dig in since the soil scattered. In a deeper pond they would be safe in a bucket or pot of sand or clay such as you would use for a water lily. Sandy

How is your scotch heather doing MO_Girl? I've only tried that one once and it died in mid summer for me so I assumed it didn't like the heat but maybe it was something else. You asked if sedum was easy to grow - very easy! It's wonderfully heat and drought tolerant. It's not evergreen but the dried flowers will remain for awhile and give you some winter interest. Autumn Joy is easy to find and grows quickly. If you need evergreen perennials for shade, heuchera and helleborus are two of my favorites. Helleborus is tricky to winter sow though. Heuchera - I got no seedlings the first time I winter sowed it and way too many the last time. For sun - dianthus is a nice front-of-border plant. I'm still experimenting with which ones do best here, but so far the green leafed varieties don't come back for me. The ones I've had with gray leaves do better and I like them better anyway. That would be a easy one to winter sow. I had good luck with candytuft seeds as well. I don't think common yucca will take over your yard. It's just very difficult to kill, maybe impossible. Plant it where you want to keep it for the rest of your life. I planted one too close to an outdoor water faucet and get stabbed every time I turn the water off and on. I have never gotten any volunteer seedlings though. I don't think it's the same one Vera mentioned. I don't get runners out away from the plant, just one big 3-4 foot clump.

I have a 10 x 20 x8 greenhouse that is a plastic vinyl cover style similar to a portable garage. We're zone 8a, in the mountains of central California and saw temps down to 22 degrees in December. We set it up as a greenhouse inside of a greenhouse. We have a 5x10 raised bed that we cover at night with survival blankets (high quality reusable, 5x7ft size $18 each, sewn together to make a larger cover) and heat with old fashioned Christmas lights and when cold, a small heater that has a very low thermostat shut off temp. We also have a 4x4ft table top that has a mini greenhouse over the top that we also cover with a survival blanket to reflect the Christmas tree lights back inside. I have 3 large tomato plants and 3 cherry tomatoes in there. I have toms every day. We also have a Japanese eggplant that is producing fruit we should be able to harvest in about a month, a regular eggplant also with baby eggplants on it. We have hot chili peppers I'm harvesting right now. We also have bush beans, but they're at the end of their life cycle - still alive but pretty tired. We have 3 mini bell peppers, two were hit pretty hard by a mildewy substance and aphids, the other is still doing well (2 different beds) but the bad ones produced up until about the end of December. We also have the typical cold weather kale, swiss chard, cabbage, and the like as well as plenty of lettuce, onion and cilantro (LOVE salsa and we're still making it fresh). It only takes me 7 minutes to close up the greenhouse at night and 5 minutes to open things up in the morning and we're not seeing a huge jump in the electric bill. It seems like the heater comes on no more than for a couple minutes and the survival blankets trap that heat for a long time. The heater is on a stepping stone at soil level so the roots are keeping warm as well. Hope this helps :-) I'm not sure if these links will post pictures but I'm giving it a try [URL=http://s147.photobucket.com/user/Audreyjeanne/media/12-5-13E_zps51a89ed3.jpg.html][IMG]http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r300/Audreyjeanne/12-5-13E_zps51a89ed3.jpg[/IMG][/URL] [URL=http://s147.photobucket.com/user/Audreyjeanne/media/12-5-13C_zpse12655d4.jpg.html][IMG]http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r300/Audreyjeanne/12-5-13C_zpse12655d4.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

in my sand... i could bury pot and all ... if you have clay soil ... and will make a non draining pot... do not bury the pot and all ... place them on the foundation of the house.. on the north side ... and make a note to tip them on their sides near thxgving ... all the better if they end up getting buried in snow ... in this application the plastic pot if perfect ... in the alternative... simply pull them out of the pots.. and plant them .. say.. in the veg garden ... and repot in early spring ... or even better.. put them in there future home ... maple seedlings.. in nature are indestructible ... the only thing that might kill them ... is too much love... DO NOT OVERTHINK THIS .. and do NOT treat them like babies... they are hardcore.. carefree.. long lived weed trees ... [that's personal bias.. lol] .... all that .. presuming you arent dealing with some non zone appropriate maple .. as there are a bazillion and a half different kind of maples.. and you really havent IDd it for us ... a pic of the leaves might get you an ID here ... and.. to reinforce such ... they are not babies.. and not houseplants .. do NOT treat them as such .... ken