I love the way you seem to have attached the rocks to the side of your skippy filter. I have just installed a skippy this summer beside my pre-fab pond. The pond has tumbeled stones stacked around the sides of it, but now I have this black thing towering over the side. And while I love what the skippy is doing for my water clarity, the bucket it's in does terrible things for the look of the pond. Incorporating your idea into mine would help tremendously, but don't have a clue as to how to begin attaching anything to the black round tub. Thanks for your photo inspiration! Karen

First of all, according to various people, you may want to reconsider keeping your catfish and pond fish together. I posted a link below - or you can do a search yourself on the subject. In our pond in Upstate NY (similar in zone to you), I remove all my tropical plants in early October. We cut back our hardy water lilies which are planted directly in the pond and drop to the bottom the other hardy plants. Our pond is 3 feet deep and approx. 3,000 gallons so the fish overwinter in the pond. I don't know what you should do with a pond that small. We purchased a plastic 100 gallon tub at Country Max for our tropical plants, and I think that would work well for your fish if you decide to bring them indoors. You would have to add a pump or air stone for aeration and something for filtration. My husband altered the "plug" with a faucet and we can drain it pretty easily with a garden hose into our basement sewer come spring. Here is a link that might be useful: catfish in a pond

Spikes such as every one likes to put in containers with begonias and geraniums are actually Dracena. Dracena is fairly easy to grow and nurseries love it when they are tossed at the end of the growing season. The so called Lucky Bamboo is also a Dracena, just a different variety. Just dig it up and rinse of the dirt to avoid any hitchhikers and pot them for houseplants. You would need a lot of tennis balls to keep a hole in the ice. If you did use them they should be corralled together. A large inflatable pillow would do the same thing which is to protect the sides of a pool from damage by the sideways pressure of the ice. It gets wedged in pretty tight so it wouldn't be of use for gas exchange. There are plans for a homemade deicer if you do a search. It is what I use. Sandy

I've been growing gourds in zone 5 for 6 - 7 years. Freezing doesn't hurt them. I always loose a few to rot. They are usually the ones that weren't quite mature when the first frost hit. Mold on the outside is a normal part of the drying process and isn't harmful. That's what gives the dry gourd their wonderful shading. If the mold bothers you, you can keep wiping them down with bleach/water solution, but I've never been able to keep away all of the mold so I quit doing that. I leave my gourds outside all winter, right in the garden where they grew. By spring they are lighter to move, and the exposure to the weather has cleaned most of them. Gourd growing is addicting. Come join in the fun!