Ok..I could of sworn I answered questions yesterday and posted! Where in teh world is it?lol Jodik, thank you so much for that! My goodness, now I can't remember what I said, but it was good..lol I know that the only success I have evr had with roses was a welcome back from winter with dead branches or once I cut them off, to see the trunks hollow! Is this some kind of borer, or from cold? Will it affect self rooted ones. In the citrus world, own roots do horrible in the soil with nemetodes and teh such, and that is why they use grafted ones. I always thought the same applied to roses? I am just grateful I can have a mentor such as you to finally be successful with mine here at home:-) Jojo...My cat is very well behaved, but what I do when I am not there is another story..lol I know he is not even interested in my plants, that is except if I do not feed him first thing in the a.m Believe me, it is only then that he has a way of letting me know that he shoukld eat before I do. But I must admit, I have to keep all palms and spider plants away from him. I never saw a tea rose before? Just what are they? Do they have that distinct very 'sweet strong' fragrance? That is what I would love to smell. Chris..You are too funny.lol Jodik, beautiful pics by the way! I'll bet you look so forward to the solsticand the return of the sun! I am sure counting the days...:-) Purple, great points made! I am not even sure if anyone sells them here. But all I need is Jodik to hook me up:-) By the way, the plants in my room are starting to flower like crazy! They love the cooler temps, breeze, humidity, and lack of bugs! My sister just dropped off three citrus trees, and two jasmine about 3 feet high because she couldn't care for them. Oh, what to do? Cut them way back, spray, and then store them in that room? Or cut them back, and store them in my cellar close to lights and let them rest? Arg! Mike

Hey there, Brenda. Lots of research does make things easier and total immersion in the topic, just like learning a new language, helps you catch on to the things that are important. This forum has a lot of info being talked about by lots of people, some of whom get pretty technical. There are plenty of others who keep it simple. Now I am going to be mean. Sometimes the limitations we cannot change make us give up some things we really want. A list of each can help see the realities. After I looked at the pond you like and read what you wanted, I realized you can't have all of it. I don't want to discourage you. You can still have a lovely and totally satisfying pond/water garden. The pond you like is a rigid preform. It is probably 72"x48" and 18" deep. It holds 125 gallons and will take 3-4 3" fish. Those dimensions are for Maccourt ponds which seems to be the most common preform. There are some new ones that are foldable made of virgin vinyl but that doesn't seem to be what you are looking at. There are also some pond kits that include plastic liners and EPDM rubber liners are very versatile. The volume of water in any of these ponds would prevent you from having koi. Koi grow to very large proportions and soon your fishies wouldn't have room to turn around, literally. I have a 1000 gallon pond and some of my 6" koi are now 12-14" after only one season. One that is 3 years old is now even larger than that. In addition I have a population of comets, sarrasa and other related fishies and they started breeding last year. Many of them started as 1" feeder fish. All of them need room to move! Fast! I'm getting nervous. There are many colorful fish other than koi that you would enjoy but you would need to control the numbers and figure out a way to keep them over winter. I put my gourami and guppies in the pond for the summer and put them back in aquariums in the winter. The cold would kill them. In your zone, it is possible for an 18 inch pond to freeze solid but more likely it would only have ice to 4-6 inches. I would wait through a full winter to see just how deep the ice goes before investing in fish other than goldfish. Gases that accumulate in the water could kill larger fish with only that much free water. An EPDM or plastic lined pond could give you the depth you need but the volume still would limit the number and type of fish. Don't despair! No one ever got it right the first time they were designing a home and you are designing a home for fish... and plants. Now that I have managed to scotch some of your dreams, (sorry, sorry, sorry) the necessary hardware can be put up for discussion. Sandy Here is a link that might be useful: preform ponds

The bar they mentioned is called a "San Angelo bar" around here, at least - that may help you locate one. HOWEVER, I still don't find them very useful for seriously rocky ground. (They are good for hardpan.) If you can't find a San Angelo bar as such, you may be able to find a six foot straight pry bar, used by riggers for loading heavy stuff - it's better steel and will cost more, but works just as well. I've tried using a bulb-planter auger in a large electric drill, and you'll spin, pretzel or break it in this kind of soil. However, one thing to try would be the smallest possible auger size in a large gasoline-powered auger. Another trick is to use an SDS-Max masonry bit in a rotary hammer. And I just saw a manual rotary post-hole digger, of the manual kind, with a very small but heavy set of blades - will cut a three inch bore or so. However, the one I saw was priced at 95 dollars!

Oh my, milosmom! No wonder you are MIA! Those are just the cutest lil' puppies! Oh my, what work! & I hope the person who left them in the porta potty will never experience that kind of abandonment in their own life! Oh, how terrible! Anyway, thank God for you, milosmom! Appreciated! Thank you for commenting on my birds...they are so beautiful to enjoy esp in the cold Winter mos. Here is one of my fav pics I took this mo. from my porch ...hiding behind the tree I have on the porch & thru the window...this Red-Bellied Woodpecker would turn every once in awhile & I was afraid he'd see me & fly off...so it looks like I'm getting the 'stare!' LOL! Enjoy your puppy time, MM! Good to hear from you! Jeanne S.