monzamess, I need to mention that before you go poking around with a metal pipe in a wet yard, make sure you know where any electrical or phone lines might be buried. :^O I wouldn't be surprised if there are two large trees growing directly over or into your lateral lines. Well fertilized and watered vegetation is going to put on some impressive growth in a hurry. That said, I have to tell you that is the strangest septic field I have ever seen. Sketched out in a bird's eye view, most would have a line running from the house to the tank, (with a vent pipe on the roof, and a clean out drain on the ground -before- you get to the septic tank), then continuing straight out from the tank with lateral lines branching off like the letter "E". After we finished reworking our septic system, our lateral lines form a modified "Y" because we had to work around existing mature trees, but the idea is to make it as easy as possible for water to drain away from the tank. It's JMHO, but a giant, elongated "s" shape would be highly inefficient to carry water; too many hairpin turns for something to back up and block the system. Not that someone couldn't put in such a system, just that it doesn't look like it would work well enough to be worth the effort. You don't say how old the "new" house is, but if it's less than 10 years old, you should be able to track down the plumber who was contracted by the builder to put the septic system in and find out what's up. You might also try calling a few local businesses that clean out septic tanks. The actual tank needs to periodically have the solids pumped out and disposed of. It could be that a previous owner has had that done, (especially if they had multiple children in the home), and the local company might be able to tell you something about the place. Once upon a time, you could have used a metal detector to find cast iron pipes, but nowdays, everything is plastic. :^/

1 lawn grass going to seed 2 perhaps hawthorn seedling 3 ivy groundcover & Norway maple on left (both invasive in many parts of the country), rose of sharon 4 thistle if prickly, wild lettuce (Lactuca) if not 5 variegated vinca 6 don’t know what it is, but try a hand tool to scratch around and root it up before it gets larger. 7 nightshade, Solanum sp. Will seed around weedily 8 young ash tree 9 vinca 10 virginia creeper and ivy 11 young Norway maple probably (tear leaf and if sap milky, Norway) 12 ash tree seedling 13 P.I. A strong mix of glysophate herbicide used on whole area, reapplied when it has resprouted, and then followed by corrugated cardboard covered by mulch will get rid of most of it. Reapply glysophate ASAP as any new sprouts appear through the mulch. This has the advantage of covering up the old foliage with its still-there urushiol oil and keeping other weeds from sprouting as well as keeping the PI from getting any photosynthesis going. Soak effected clothing in Biz, wash twice with regular detergent. Wash skin with alcohol, soap, alcohol, soap. It is drying to skin, but will remove all PI oil. Wipe down shoes with alcohol. I can get rash again from clothes that weren’t adequately cleaned. Microwave a bowl of oatmeal and smear that on skin when cool for the ultimate relief. 1% cortisone creme works to reduce itch as well. (It took me most of a summer to figure out that our cat was wandering into the PI and then sitting on the furniture and I was getting it all over the back of my legs from Urushiol on the furniture.) 14 Virginia creeper and some more nightshade 15 Hosta (plain green at top) but not sure of viney thing, perhaps more nightshade 16 See comment for 6 17 sedge, a grass-like plant but not grass. Some varieties are ornamental, so if you like it, leave it. 18 not sure what it is, but a weed. It has seeds with fluff attached that will drift around and reseed if you let it get that far 19 Avens - weedy type probably 20 weed, but don’t know name - has tiny pink or white flowers 21 ivy - see note for 3 22 Virginia creeper spreads more than I like in my garden even though it's native 23 wild or black cherry (Prunus) seedling 24 red maple seedling 25 garlic mustard - don’t let it go to seed as it will increase exponentially. Has short tap root, so a narrow weeder or old screwdriver may help if you aren't getting the roots out 26 dandelion 27 If it is fuzzy, it probably isn’t a violet; it somehow doesn't look quite right 28 same as 9 Vinca 29 red oak group seedling - could be red oak, black oak 30 hosta - different variety than at top of 15 31 my sympathies! A suggestion that you start saving the cartons from your folks' move or collecting cartons at the grocery store as well as newspapers. As soon as you get an area cleared, put down cardboard if it is a large area or multiple layers of newspaper, folded as needed if you are working around plants (wet it down so it stays put) and then cover immediately with mulch. This will reduce more weeds sprouting since this whole yard most probably has a huge bank of weed seeds in the soil. The least expensive way to get mulch is by the truck load if there is somewhere you can have it dumped and then wheel-barrow it to where you want it. (Some towns compost yard waste and residents can get mulch free or inexpensively as long as they pick it up.) When things are a bit under control, you can cut in a deep V edge between the lawn and the mulched areas or get some of the plastic edging and dig a slot to bury that along the edge. Once these things are done, you can decide if you want to do some planting, probably next season. Just remember where the PI used to be so that you don't get it from the dead plants and roots. PS - the cookie recipe would be more than welcome to me!

And then, there is Âluck in sciences as well as in math. We just have to find the proper Âplace for it. We used to teach that even if the story about Isaac Newton and the falling apple had been true that would not prove the Law of Gravitation by this incident alone and nobody could verify or falsify NewtonÂs laws by looking at a falling apple. By the same token, even if it was the case that Kekule could come up with the ring structure of the benzol (benzine?) after dreaming about a snake that had bitten its tail, it does not imply that any other person could verify or falsify KekuleÂs discovery by dreaming again about a snake. ÂLuck is often reported in scientists account of their discovery. If I recall correctly Watson and Crick also described some Âluck in their discovery of the DNA, or rather, their being the first, and beating Pauling to it who was also very close. [If my memory fails me, I hope Mike Rivers will correct me. I read W&CÂs book many, many, many years ago, and I am not going to Âfess up how many years ago that was, LOL!] So I would not discount the role of "luck" in science, math or everyday life. The word Âluck usually a summary of physiological episodes or some other incidents out of the usual boundaries of scientic reserach or mathemathical thought process, and labeled Âluck - for the lack of better words. What we should remember though is, that Âluck wonÂt and cannot play any role in proving (or refuting) a theory in math or verifying (or falsifying) a discovery, a datum, or some phenomenon in sciences. The process of proving or verifying must be some Âinter-subjective method and/or techniques accepted by the scientific or math community and by which the Âdiscovery can be repeated by everyone who has the intellectual capacity (that is: education) and other apparatus, given the same conditions (laboratory or other) to reach the same conclusion. If no method is provided for verifying or falsifying a scientific statement, then the given Âdiscovery is considered, in the best case scenario just a Âlucky guessÂ, or discarded, most of the time, altogether. Scientists do not like the term "luck" or "lucky guess" because they cannot work with it. Mathematicians, on the other hand, are a bit more receptive to it if the lucky guess makes Âintuitive sense or appears to be trivially true. Still, they will not rest till a valid proof will be found. In some cases, like FermatÂs guess (the correct English translation, I think, is FermatÂs Enigma) the unproven theory frustrated mathematicians for several centuries till a valid proof was presented about 350 years later than the theorem has become known. Sorry for the long divergence from the issue of roses :-((.

It's not so much the pond as the wet sand. Butterflies won't drink from standing water, but rather they land on wet soil and drink from the dirt. So by mounding the sand in the pool, I make a permanently moist beach as the sand will wick the water up at least 2 inches above the water level, possibly more, but I haven't mounded the sand up any higher than that. If you have a patch of open dirt in your yard, like around a citrus tree, spray it down on a nice sunny day and wait about 30 minutes. Over the summer I was always greeted by a veritable carpet of Sulphur and and Hairstreak (I believe) butterflies after watering my citrus trees. Which always annoyed me a bit since the pool was, at the time, about 12 feet from my Persian Lime that they would drink at. As far as bees go, the only thing that I have seen in my yard that will attract bees is my white-colored pentas. For most of the summer there were so many bees and wasps on those pentas that no butterflies would visit them. But I haven't seen the bees since the last Love Bug invasion and since then the Gulf Frits have been visiting those plants more frequently. Having said that, I'm more of a foliage person and so I don't have a lot of flowering plants yet. The white pentas are the only flowers I have on the west side of my house and I only have lavendar and white Trailing Lantanas on the east side. But that will hopefully be changing next spring as I set about building a wildflower bed (Yay! Even LESS grass to mow!). I also have cuttings from Purple, Pink and Red Pentas rooting, so those will be planted next spring as well.