All those lovely flowers are so cheery!! Can't wait for our area to get that flowery!! Nice pond pics too. Anne

I am glad I provided some humor for you. Just this morning, we unloaded about 5 ton of granite boulders and placed them on our "mountain." Now that the handcart is beefed up, it makes moving these boulders a lot easier than you would think. We had to build a trail (that we were going to build anyway, btw) ahead of time just in order to be able to move the boulders into place. We also had to put boulders into place just to keep the 50 or so Knockout roses from floating down the mountain. Those pumps are scary looking. I am guessing that each one of those babies is going to use $50 a month in electricity. 9000 gph and they can push the water 60 feet vertically. I blew the rear end out of the Ford F-150 the last go around driving 300 miles to get concrete pond molds. Each waterfall will have a series of drops with 3 small ponds. We will be building them inside the garage this winter. With all of the excavation and ponds and mountains and gigantic boulders, our formerly "huge" place is getting to feel smaller and smaller. We will eventually stop when we run out of room. I have been eyeing the vacant lot across the street and wondering if the county would let me "connect" my property to it with some sort of wooden pedestrian bridge across the street.

I'm glad you enjoyed the picture. Every night we have several frogs and toads in the pond singing and breeding (toads also breed in water). They advertise by their croaking to attract mates I assume and then most are gone during the day. My only regret is that I didn't build the pond a lot bigger because it is so much fun to have water plants and fish (and frogs) and watch them have babies. And I use the water as a special treat for the roses. BTW, the frog is on the stone at 11 o'clock from the big red rose.

Thanks! We don't have many mosquitoes here. Sand flies, by the millions though. I try to clean out/change the water on my bird baths/pools every few days and just about every day when it's hot. I have a regular bird bath (pedestal and dish) then various other saucers and old glassware pots about to a total of 6 or 7. Even with the lake right here, they see a LOT of use in the summer! I added two this year (this one and another in a perennial bed) to the four I had last year. In the hottest months, I would come home to empty saucers last year from the water being splashed out/drunk (drank?). I might add another regular bird bath still, and maybe another old pot (pyrex), I just need to determine a place for them. Well, and maybe a bigger water feature with a pump in a "problem" bed that would take up space from annoying plants like lily of the valley!