I've read that you are not to clean the fiilter media...ever. I built my own biofilter...not a skippy but I am about to add one due to all the good things I have heard about them. My pond is in the stage of green pea soup also. I have heard it is a stage that ponds go through this time of year. I am trying the quilt batting. I have it in the top layer of my biofilter and it is catching quite a bit of the algae. I purchased mine from Michaels. I also am using it around my pump. I am letting it run two hours around the pump because it gets pretty dirty quickly. This works great to catch all the small algae. You have to be careful to not catch the batting in the pump. I guess we will see how good it works. I'm thinking about building something that would add some type of barrier between the batting and pump to avoid this problem. Probably a project for tomorrow. Good luck! If anyone has good ideas to get the pond clear I am open to the hints as well!

The Ilex vomitoria cultivar that stays very upright is called 'Will Flemming' I have never used it but it is an interesting selection. Other options might be Ligustrum texanum (Buy 15 gallon espalier on 5' x 5' trellis) I did this on a project last June planted them 5' OC and the plants are about 7-1/2' tall right now(where untrimmed)and about 1' thick. You could probably get them to grow to 10'maybe more. Eugenia myrtifolia is another option (Australian Brush Cherry) 'Monterey Bay' is a nice clone. Lets see- I have seen Grewia caffra get 12' tall (But it will need some support for a while until the plant gets woody enough to hold its own weight and would need some pinching to get it to be bushy enough. Sometimes you can find Magnolia grandiflora 'Little Gem' or St Mary espaliered as well- Podocarpus henkelii would be OK if you could let it go a bit thicker (like 3-4') Also Calliandra haematocephala espaliered could work. If you have shade maybe a vigorous Camellia like 'Silver Waves' espaliered in 15 gallons could work but it would be a quite a wait to get the height.

Neither. I like a lighter one, but not the one you picked. that one is too red. And for sure I would NOT go dark. Mapei, left, two on the right are Custom Products. I like these colors better. this is their Dapple Gray Merona tile. your lines will be like this. but notice how the grout color is an exact match. neither too dark or too light. light grout. more rustic looking tile, same grout spacing, darker color. I think w/this flooring you could get away w/a darker grout color because of the darker veining colors. this one used a darker grout, but the grout lines are thinner. I wouldn't like it if it had the thicker joints Merona Natural tile.

I assume you are boxing in the end of the bar, so maybe you could make the faux beam cover the triangle portion by that end with molding at the bottom. Because Yes to getting the angle cut piece, as it would be a more "normal" place for a seam to be and is in a much better area to be less noticeable.