I'm new to this too. I tried a few different recipes, colours and molds before making a large trough. The large one is till curing, but here are the others I made. All this plus a trough twice the size of these from one bag of cement. The two bigger ones in the picture were made outside a cardboard box covered in plastic. That worked well, but might have worked better if I'd filled the box with sand since the sides tended to push in. The other three were built outside bricks coated in plastic. They proved very difficult to release and one of them cracked in half (the one at the front, mortared back together). The bricks have no give and so any slight irregularity binds tight. I made the large trough inside a wooden former, again coated in plastic. Forming inside gives a slightly different look to forming outside and you might want to roughen the exterior after you release. I have tried these recipes: Cement:Peat:Sand:Vermiculite 1:1:1:1 This is my favourite recipe. It is strong, light enough for my needs, and I like the appearance. The trough on the right. Cement:Peat:Sand:Perlite 1:1:1:1 Not so good. A little lighter but probably not as strong. The appearance is too smooth for my taste. The trough on the left, stained. Cement:Sand:Vermiculite 1:2:3 This really is a lightweight concrete, not hypertufa. The proportions should be OK, but it is either curing very slowly or is very weak. Very pale colour, like regular concrete, might be good with a stain or dye. The small trough at the back with a little ferrous sulphate in the mix to give a slight pink blush. All these recipes include sand because I want enough strength to survive the wet and freeze/thaw conditions here. The sand adds quite a bit to weight. You might choose to use a mesh inserr of glass fibres instead to get flex strength and resistance to cracking with less weight.

http://outdoorsbest.zeroforum.com/zerothread?id=350893 Someone gave instructions on this message thread on how to grow a coconut from the nut. I think you will have to move though. The tree needs to be planted outside. http://cookycoconuts.com/Plantgrowacoconut.html More coconut growing instructions. http://www.citrusnorth.com/f28/coconut-palm-seed-162/ Some emphasis about warmth required, winter in the house is probably too cool, and the massive growth. If you are still going to do it with all that, be sure to choose a viable coconut. http://hafa-adai.blogspot.com/2006/07/how-to-plant-coconut-tree.html "With the seeds, the first thing you have to do is to make sure that they are viable. You do this by shaking the coconut seed. If you hear water, the seed is viable. If you don't hear water, the seed is dead."

I've had so much RRD that I try to stand back and look for multiple symptoms. What's healthy with the two pictures is that they aren't becoming rosettes- that is closely spaced leaves and she isn't getting hte excessive leaf axil breaks. Those ought to be showing up on the bushes that had the problem last year. (Before I forget, it's not Spring Dwarf. Wrong symptoms.) And the thorns aren't becoming denser. The green color can be RRD midsummer and some cultivars don't go red, even with RRD. Ask her about the distribution of sick roses in her garden. Are they all on the leeward side of a fence? Are they next to each other? (where the problem could have spread root to root)? Then it's time to look at herbicide going from roots of target plants into the roses. It happens. And it's documented in literature. In my garden, it's happened with Tordon; there are at least three published/jury reviewed papers about Round-ups ingredient doing the root-to-root spread and in one of the papers they couldn't get Round up to go volatile even in the heat of an inland California summer. Please come back and talk about the pattern of the problem within the garden. As to where RRD is: It's been in Canada to the north of the upper peninsula on at least five different occassions (not recently reported, however). The reservoir plants are thought to be roses. My deep down worry is that it has a second, as yet unrecognized reservoir plant on which it may not be as deforming. And I doubt that it will be found in my lifetime, unless by luck, someone says...this sick rose growns next to a kerfuffle tree that hasn't been as good as all the other kerfuffle trees I've seen. In China, there's a disease recognized in a rose garden that's a phytoplasma and it's been traced on the molecular level to a nearby pawlonia tree with witches' broom and the molecular patterns of the phytoplasmas of both the roses and the tree are a near match. But the symptoms of that problem include rose blooms that are totally green. Which so far aren't our problem although a lot of the other symptoms would be familiar to folks here who've had RRD in their roses. Could the disease be different in a colder climate? Also a possibility. One test she should do is get some iodine (the kind that sadistic parents used to put on kids' scratches) and cut a slice/thin section across a rose cane. RRD inhibits the formation of starch from sugar. There should be no blue-black color there. (A tooth pick will turn blueblack because of stored starch). You can tell this is a off-the-top-of-my-head answer. Come back with some more info and we'll work this one out. (Please don't post more pictures. My computer is excessively slow this summer ...danged land line.)

Its a duck, a green wing teal I believe. Birds have a number of predators, small and medium mammals, other birds, reptiles. Could be a hawk or owl, or a cat or fox or raccoon. Squirrels even will raid nests I believe.