Grant, How beautiful! Your "new" pond is apparently balanced and very happy. Congratulations! Aren't they wonderful? Such a breath of fresh air, er, water in our desert environment. I see you are now ready for another, they are pretty addicting. Now do tell, how many water lilies have you planted in your 6' pond? Have you found any other sources here in Phx besides Lowes for water plants? I would love to get some water hycinth but haven't found any pond shops carrying it so far. The last time I got some, it was from the old Tip Top down on Bell near 32nd but they are no longer there now. How many fish do you have and have you had any toad visitors now that the monsoons are here? This past week we had many come to our pond for mating. I went out one night to see what all the racket was about and found 3 couples, well, coupling, plus a couple of lone rangers croaking to attract their own mate! X rated ponding! Thanks for sharing these photos. All beautiful but I just love that last coral hued lily.

OK .... i have green giants... that i started from 6 inch peat plugs in 2001, or so .... and abused them greatly .. lol ... they are about 15 feet tall ... and about 5 to 8 feet wide.. and are just getting rolling .. no tree/conifer ... is going to magically stop growing ... on my 5 acres.. they are going to be just great ... especially when they are 30 feet tall by 10 feet wide ... or 15 ... i was thinking your yard was a bit smaller .... but i cant see it .. so you are going to have to decide... if they are of proper proportion to your yard .... are you willing to give up 10 or 15 feet .. back where you want to plant them???? white pine .... ALWAYS ends up shedding lower branches... as it get 30.. 40.. 50.. 60 .. 120 .. feet tall ... you can leave them .. but they can get really ugly ... and then you are left with big stinkin trees... but not the privacy you wanted .... are you willing to give up this much space???? please.. consider this .... YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PLANT ALL OF ONE THING .... do two pines... do a few GGiants .. and a few spruce.. etc ... diversity rules .... and if somewhere down the line.. some dont please you ... or get too ugly .. you remove just those... but still have the privacy you want... and keep in mind ... trees planted... half way out to the property line... can be correspondingly smaller.. to offer teh privacy you want .... no one says.. privacy barriers have to be lined out at the fence .... a picture would sure help .. good luck ken

First off, I am a weather fanatic, I've been closely following weather since I was younger and with more zeal then ever now that I have become a gardener. I find it fascinating and even do some amatuer storm chasing. Second, I do believe there is a climate change underway and I strongly feel humankind is to blame for most of that - but this is for another post or probably another forum alltogether. Next, I do water in the morning, in fact right now I am watering hard as another day in the low 80s is expected here - quite unusual again for this time of the year here. I rarely water during the heat of the day for a variety of reasons, but one of the biggest is that I do a lot of hand-watering with watering cans and too much heat can make it a pretty exhaustive venture. I guess the real subject of this post should have been more like: "For those with brand-new(less then a year established) pots of conifers, do you water them during the spring/summer/fall months once a week or four times a week, or what? I have a fairly sandy, fast-draining soil, so I am tempted to water twice a week or more during hot dry spells but I was curious what schedules other conifer enthusiasts stuck to. Love to hear from you, Will

Dry rootballs are often the result of textural differences between the soilless potting medium or claylike field soil the plants came from the nursery in and the soil on the new site. If the rest of the bed was moist with the heucheras only being dry then it was something like that - something involving the heucheras specifically - and not the overall conditions. This should have been apparent when these were dug and pulled apart(?) but heucheras specifically are prone to weevil larvae gnawing the roots off and leaving a sort of nearly rootless husk sitting on top of the ground, unable to keep itself turgid without diligent watering - and maybe not even then. The same thing is common here with primroses.