I would guess there are some municipal constraints that control what you can do with a spring. It might be smarter to landscape in a way that allows the water to ebb and flow than to try to shunt if off your property - if that is where mother nature and the city decree that it should be. Also, where do you want the water to go - check that it is OK for it to go there. The more you can tell (and show) about the problem and the area, the better the information you will get. Karin L

We had a couple of pocket gophers earlier in the year. We are in a new development on the outskirts of Edmonton. I had never seen these before and I'm a native Edmontonian. DH killed the first one that was trapped in our window well and one of our cats decided the second one would make a good meal and just left "evidence" (nasty teeth and a nasty front paw) to prove that she got it. Haven't seen anymore but I think my good, garden cats are still keeping an eye out for them. According to the article in the link above, they do not hibernate and are active through the winter under the snow. I plan on keeping an eye out for them this winter and hopefully, we get no more. BTW, the rat program in Alberta is rather interesting. I investigated it a bit when we discovered the pocket gophers and we have poison stations set up along both borders, in cooperation with the border farmers. Most that we do get are either brought in on a shipment from somewhere else or are occasionally escaped commercial, live food for pet snakes, etc. It is unlawful to own rats for this purpose in Alberta. The program cannot be entirely foolproof for obvious reasons, but I sure like knowing that they are few and far between in Alberta. Shauna Here is a link that might be useful: Alberta Rat control program

I may have part of the answer regarding why aspirin may be of some use. A few years ago, I had a class in plant pathology during my university years during which we had discussed methyl salicylate's role in plant disease. We had come across a paper in a scientific journal relating an experiment on tobacco plants (frequently used in research because they'll catch almost any disease imaginable and they're cheap and easy to grow) following the discovery that some plants, when infected by some disease, gave off some of it in the form of vapor. What was observed was that the neighboring plants, although eventually attacked as well by the same disease, showed less severe symptoms. An experiment was then conducted under controlled conditions during which tobacco plants were exposed to the compound. What was found was that methyl salicylate did in fact improve the plants' ability to withstand disease. So what happenned ? I can't remember what was said in the paper following the results, but the answer undoubtedly lies in what are called elicitors and messengers. I'll spare you the details (and for myself, the task of digging through my old school notes in some forgotten corner of the basement) but the big idea of it is that some plants produce certain chemical compounds under certain stresses (such as disease) which may evaporate out of the plant and be dispersed in the surrounding air. Neighboring plants of the same species would then, upon contact with trace amount of the messenger chemical, react by producing increased quantities of some compounds which increase their ability to withstand stress (such as additional cell wall material, certain plant hormones, increased quantities of wax on the leaves which would slow fungal attack). This may sound far-fetched, but keep in mind that plants are highly complex organisms and that most of them do have some biological or chemical way of reducing their susceptibility to disease. Of course, not all plants may produce methyl salicylate, not all plants may react to it, and not all plants may produce volatile compounds. But within the same plant, there are often distinctly observable reactions in healthy plant parts when one of them is under attack by a pathogen. As I said, there may be more wax production, there may be a change in leaf orientation on new growth (in order to reduce moisture retention on the leaf surface, thus reducing the ability of some pathogens to survive before penetrating the leaf surface), there may be changes in the chemical make-up of sap and so on. Reactions such as this have repeatedly been observed in many plants under stress. While it may not always allow a plant to ultimately survive the disease, it may allow it some extra time to flower and set seed, thus allowing it to reproduce. Imagine the population-wide advantage of having stumbled upon the ability to communicate such information as the presence of disease ! Anyhoo, back to your roses and black spot. Perhaps roses would react to aspirin, perhaps not. It's certainly worth a try in my opinion and I dout it would harm the plants. One thing it will certainly not do, however, is act as a fungicide; at best, expect a reduced incidence and/or severity of black spot on the plants you'd have sprayed with aspirin. Some people might object to spraying man-made compounds such as aspirin in their yard even though it does occur naturally in some plants (like many other synthetics, which naturally occur in several life forms), but that's a matter of personal opinion. If you're one of those people, but you're intrigued by this whole aspirin idea, you might want to try researching willows or wintergreen. Aspirin was first developed from willow leaves (indians used to chew them as a cure for headaches) and wintergreen contains methyl salicylate, so there may be some way to use them as a natural plant spray. I have no idea if it would work, this is purely hypothetic, but who knows.... I hope this has been informative....good luck !

The website sandra referenced also mentions kool-aid dyeing, and a third option (very appropriate this time of year) could be Easter Egg dye tablets! Snap them up at 1/2 price the day after for some cheap fun. Google can lead you to lots of yarn dyeing tutorials, even Kool-Aid color charts. Sorry, not enough time to reference my favorites right now, . . . because. . . I want to tell you about yesterday's thrift store finds. I was fortunate to hit a Salvation Army shop that is clearing out their winterweight sweaters for 99 cents! It's spring! Maybe some of your shops will do similarly. I found six: Old Navy, 70% cotton/30% lambswool, worsted weight, LIGHT BLUE with a KETTLE-DYED appearance Valerie Stevens ?, 100% LAMBSWOOL, sportweight, MARLED LIGHT BROWN, tan, & burgundy. Kind of blah, so maybe I'll over-dye it Outback Red, 100% wool, fingering, NAVY and med. blue TWEED WITH teeny ORANGE NUBS, and Very NEAT BUTTONS Weathervane, 100% wool, heavy worsted CREAM. This one will be dyed for sure. Open Country?, 100% Shetland wool, sport, OLIVE HEATHER, WITH a deep red, rust, yellow, and brown FAIR ISLE BAND. Yes, I'll save the contrast color bits, and store them with the olive, because one row across the front or back of a man's sweater is about equal to a row on a hat, and the color planning is already done for me. French Connection ?, 55% SILK, 30% acrylic, 15% ANGORA, Very Fine weight, multishaded grey. Don't know how successful an unravel this one will be, but I LOVE the 5 steel grey mother of pearl BUTTONS! Do I know now what any of them will become? No, and so I warn you again, this can be habit-forming.