Spraying neem allows the product to get to all of the nooks and crannies, stems, etc. You certainly CAN use a soft cloth, but the efficacy of the application wouldn't be the best. Neem can also be taken up by plant roots and has shown to be effective in controlling certain sucking insects systemically.

Hi Waterbug guy. I wouldn't clean the pond out but I would take quite a few and remove them to another container like a whiskey barrel large pail, put a dissolved fertilizer tab in the water. Use your pond water if you can or make sure you use dechlorinator if its fresh water. It really looks like a sprinkler hit them or some sort of water spray when the leaves were in full sun. Another test is take one and place it in a plastic zipper bag with some pond water. Within 24 hrs, you should visibly see what skirting across the surface and selectively peeling your leaves. Could very well be Caterpillars and yes, they can tread water. If you find that it is Caterpillars, buy some BT worm killer by Ortho. Great stuff, will not harm your fish or anything else. Follow directions on the label and spray in the cool of the evening when the sun is not on your leaves. Caterpillars like to eat at night and you can stop them in their tracts. Good Luck and happy ponding.

If we trench around the whole house to put in PVC pipe a bit lower than any newly installed drain in the well, we'd have to dig up a few rows of cobble patio. That's the only area we can think of that has enough slope to drain the water away to. Covers won't work because the water is just filling in via the bottom. It's not rained hard enough lately to see if water is seeping in between the house & metal well. Thought maybe we'd rent an auger or Chipping hammer to hopefully dig down to cleanish gravel and clean the clay/soil out of the top. Thinking if that was done, maybe the water would trickle down. I take back what I said about my knowledge on fixes :). I do know I don't want to make a hole through the house to have an inside drain. Or - I'd "prefer" not to. Only a 1" pipe would fit between the walls which might be ok, but it would be very tricky to do without tearing apart all the drywall down there.

I have this faucet. It may help to know that even with really reduced water pressure that the Watercare version uses (has the 1.5 gpm insert) and the aerator installed - it splashes all over he^^. I have an 8 inch deep sink and the drain is exactly under the faucet. The faucet at full force into an empty sink doesn't splash. The faucet at full with just about anything underneath it will splash like heck. I'm kinda convinced it has to do with the height of the head over the sink and the angle of the water flow. I'm probably not helping as I treat the lever as on/off and just about never turn the volume of flow down. If you can train yourself not to do that and not to push objects into the flow above the sink, it can help. I'm pretty sure the slightly less splashing is not worth the agro of having to be that careful.