Oh, thank you Deanna. I'm much more likely to get around to cleaning it now. I copied the design from a book :) It's the easiest design there is- it's just a giant rectangle. We let the size of the liner dictate the width: The liner came in fifteen foot widths, so we made the pond eight feet wide (with three feet to go up each side and a little for slop). We dug it three feet deep at one end and two and a half at the other end. You can make it as long as you like (in our case, as long as we could afford for liner). We lined the inside of the rubber liner with cinderblocks and then used fake Eldorado stone to surface it. We build the little raised well at the end from cinderblocks and faced it with the same Eldorado fake rock. Then we sealed the little well with Thoroseal, and I used a concrete cast leaf for the spillway. All we have running it is one 550 GPH pump which sits at one end of the big pond and feeds water up through a plastic tube into the cast iron water pump. That empties into the well, and spills over the cast leaf. If I had more money when we built it, I would have put in a bottom drain, a skimmer, and a biofilter. Now I just pump out the sludge with a sump pump once a year. It has a delightful odor, and stains nicely too. The goldfish do just fine, but you could not keep koi in it. I built it for the plants. We are in the process of connecting the pond visually with my swimming pool (4x7 feet) at the other end of the backyard with some little plastic kidney-shaped preformed ponds. I don't do anything for those- just throw in a few mosquito fish and some plants and drain once a year or so. Renee the lazy ponder

Hosenemesis - I've already experienced Iris 'ink' on my white kitchen tile. Couldn't even get it off my hands....but of course it wiped up easily from the ceramic. And thanks, Lilah - such a gorgeous flower - I hope someday some genius can propagate a long lasting Iris!!! But I changed the water today and one bud opened four hours later - and yes they were pretty well-developed. But even in the garden it's sad -- it's such a short season and yet I can't stop loving them. Westy

Rio Samba and Cherry Parfait are my favs. Which is really weird since I had them both before at my old house, and I didn't like either of them. Cherry Parfait is a work horse year after year, but the flowers left me cold. Yet yours is beautiful. Go figure. :) Carol

Thanks so much Sandra! I'm sorry I haven't replied until now. My work schedule this past week and just life in general was hectic... I really like the last one of the 3 black stools. They work well with the table in the morning room. I wonder if they would stay clean though, with kids (and adults--b/c we make messes too!). I looked a little bit today in real life, but couldn't find anything that stood out. Thank you to the others as well, for your kind compliments! I did find drawer pulls today for the island and to replace on the other cabinets! And they were 1/2 off b/c The Great Indoors is closing near us! I haven't made a decision on pendants yet either. I still need to look at backsplash too...but now I'm realizing that the tumbled marble I was envisioning probably won't work with the granite...it will be too hard to match. We'll see...