LP, actually we do have an Osprey that hangs out for a couple of weeks each winter. It fishes in the river with the herons, fascinating to watch it fish. The river is only about 400 feet from the house. There are no large trees near the house, so I'm hoping the osprey will stick with the river, since there are large trees it can fly to after a catch there. Also, one of the primary purposes for the moat is to eliminate the need for a fence. Our house is in the middle of our pasture. I need something to keep the goats out of the yard, and a moat seems aesthetically more pleasing than a fence, which would intrude on our view of the river in back, and the 2 acre lake in front of our house. Goats won't walk through mud if they can avoid it let alone standing water. We have livestock guard dogs (Great Pyrenees and Anatolian Shepherds), and they are not too approving of any large bird flying over the pasture or landing in an area they can get to. They will usually run underneath them until they exit the property. Some buzzards were trying to get at a placenta (it is kidding season right now) the other day, but had to go look for an easier meal because the LGD's wouldn't let them land long enough to eat. The herons and osprey will probably have the same problem. During the summer I expect the dogs will swim in the pond, will that cause a problem? Azponder, your points about contractors are well taken. I just spent 2 years building this house, and I do mean building it. I did most of the work myself or hired my own crews because I either couldn't find contractors or had to fire the ones I hired. By the time we finished I was beginning to wonder if I spoke some strange dialect of english that most contractors couldn't understand. I have a very good idea of what I want from the pond, I'm just not entirely sure how to get there. As I've been doing more research it has become apparent that what is necessary/desirable for a small pond is not necessary or desirable for one as large as I am planning. My contractor told me I wouldn't need any filtration, just to keep the water moving, and I'm gathering for the pond I envision he is probably correct. If you think about it, the pond I am building is the size of a lot of golf course lakes, and most of those I am familiar with are pretty clear without using any filters even though they have fish, turtles, frogs, etc. Does anybody here have experience with a pond this large that could provide some feedback?

she's a graceful lady bird... and how long have you been doing stained glass? for some reason, I thought you only did mosaics in broken dishes or something... so many of you have such beautiful pieces finished and/or working on.. where's this piece going to be displayed?

I didn't know a cowbird was an egret. That's interesting, who'd a thought? They got ripped off on looks. Hey Mara, remember when I was feeling sorry for cowbirds when you were having to deal with them, building those cages and things and we got testy (well, probably it was mostly me getting emotional)? I still think they found an interesting, even if its rather sloppy, solution for raising their young while on the move, fine and dandy back in the day of the huge buffalo herds but they really got the short end of the stick and are now hated by so many because of the songbird plight, just because they are doing what they have always done. Its not unlike armadillo's defense against threats or predator's---run and appear like they are attacking, then bam, they plow right into moving cars and get run over. We see the poor things all over the highways here, sometimes by the hundreds it seems. I think of both as victims of modernity and loss of habitat. Horned toads and possums came up with a better plan of action--- play dead. "Nah, he's not dead, he's just playin' possum". klem, my sister is plagued by those Kites every year. That is one mean bird and they are deadly serious about their territory. They don't just send out warnings, its for real. Kamakazi.

The concept of warm and cool colors predates most of the scientific tools we have today to measure color. It originated from the concept of warmth vs cold. the Oxford English Dictionary describes 18th century usage to include: Cold - applied to tints or colouring which suggest a cold sunless day, or the colder effect of evening; esp. to blue and grey, and tints akin to these. Warm - suggestive of warmth, said especially of red or yellow ... to become 'warmer' or more ruddy: "On a bright morning of July, when the grey of the sky was just beginning to warm with the rising day". I always conceptualized the concept as warm-related to the heat of the sun or cool of the water. The scientific difference deals with the sensitivity of the S cone. I am not a neuro science expert, but it has something to do with thresholds of the S cone and how colors change as they are desaturated. Blue goes from blue to darker and darker blue, but we still perceive the color as blue and we name the colors as blue light blue, sky blue, navy blue. When we change the chroma Blue goes from bright blue to gray blue. You can't do the same with yellow. We only see yellow in very specific ranges of light and chroma. We call dark yellow gold or brown and as we desaturate yellow it can either move toward green or violet. At the lowest saturations there isn't any yellow or orange or red. Have you ever heard someone describe a gray as a dark yellow gray? Nope. Beige can be pink, yellow, gold or green and gray can be green gray, blue gray or violet gray. So when the hue is yellow and it is desaturated it becomes olive green or brown - moves toward red or toward green it never stays yellow. At some point it moves to either a green gray or violet gray and looses any association with yellow. Grays are innately cool. - related to water, not the sun. Do you ever picture the sun as gray? Do you ever picture water as yellow? Where is the break between cool and warm? At what level of chroma do we determine that a yellow is no longer warm, but has moved into the cool zone? That may actually depend on your physiology - some people see more colors than other and can discern subtle changes in color better than others. It may also depend on the levels of dopamine in your system - we see colors more vividly when dopamine levels are high than we do when dopamine levels are low. I don't know if their is a definitive answer to your question about Chantilly Lace. Is it above or below the S cone threshold? It seems that the color experts at Benjamin Moore agree with many other color experts and define it as a cool white so my guess is that it is beyond the threshold of chroma where we actually perceive the color as warm even if it is in a CIE LCH hue that is generally associated with the Munsell Yellow Green hue family. BTW - CIE LCH Is linear in nature, where Munsell is not. The Muncell hues curve when mapped against LCH hues. The curvature expands as chroma and luminance are reduced. How we see color and how we measure color are not perfectly correlated.