Hi Beatrice: Welcome to the pond forum. I have been ponding for 10 years now and I always tend to rush the season when we have nice weather. Your frogs are probably still in hibernation. One year when we had an early spring I hurried to get the pond up and running. When I vacuumed my top pond and settlement pond I found what I thought were five frogs dead. I placed them on the ground in a row till I had time to bury them. I didn't get to it that day, and when I looked for them the next morning they were gone. I guess they were still hibernating and when I took them out of the cold pond water and laid them in the sun they eventually warmed up and jumped back into the pond. Last year was the first year I had tadpoles. I hope some of them made it through the winter. I haven't seen any frogs yet. One of my pond forum buddies told me they will probably appear in May. She, too, thought she lost her frog last year, but it showed up in May. She reminded me we are still in April and even though we are having warm weather the pond water is still cold. Hang in there, they should be waking up soon. Jenny

Hi In my case a "purge system" is a connection to rainwater runoff from the roof carried by underground pipes ,overflow goes into a gravel area . The "marsh is about 10 years old and in the past I grew mostly emergent tropical foliage . I grow the carpeting type plants in aquariums with degrees of success and since I was reworking the marsh thought it would be interesting to not only attempt them there but with the added twist of a geometric garden BUT underwater. They are VERY finicky and require constant management even in a controlled area of an aquarium. In order to "carpet they need a fins substrate so they can root horizintally other wise they tend to bolt for the surface. I ran a "vertical hydroponic design for several years in the GH. I called it a "seepwall" trying to emulate those areas in tropical forests . Just short of a water fall. While it was gorgeous it was a nightmare of management!!lol. I no longer heat the GH overwinter so it's become very limited as well as the reservoir developed a leak. It now serves as a semi/aquatic terrarium. Back to the "marsh" lol It will be 4x5 approximately 15 inches deep to allow enough water for the contained emergents so will have an area of around 2x5 feet for the carpets I feel that it can serve between early march to late oct . but since it will be depleted by that time need an easy way to remove the substrate. In aquariums I use a mix of "blackcow and topsoil with a light coating of fine sand. but obviously wouldn't work outdoors though it might if there's an easy way to remove it. Obviously it would pass right through a screen though I'm thinking cheesecloth but would probably rot.. Just another one of my crazy ideas that require total failure to make me move onto the next crazy idea!!!. Thanks for the help!!! gary.

Some of the smaller ones may be Bullfrogs but most of them are Green Frogs. I always send the Bullfrogs a little further down the road near the other side of the lake. One of the bigger ones is very BRIGHT green. I would love for them all to stay but I am worried about the load on my pond through the winter. I know a lot of them will leave on their own but I also wonder how many actually make it.

Hey Pelham, I wrote a reply to this message a couple of days ago but for whatever reason it did not go through. I will try again :) I had a similar situation with my 3 Duncan Grapefruits this winter. I had a bout with scale all winter long speading from my fingerlime to ever Citrus I owned at the time. The Grapefruit trees took it hard, one loosing 70% of it's leaves and the other lost about 50% before it was all said and done. I also aparently had 2 spotted spider mites whic from what I was told was causing the majority of the leaf loss. You can tell if you have them by looking for little spider strings on the tree. So here are some questions and suggestions. 1) Have you cleaned off the tree of all scale and erradicated them all. If not, even though a lot of people may scorn me for the reccomendation, I reccomend 1-2 Tablespoons of Malithion and 1 tablespoon of Petrolium based horticutural oil. Please be aware that you may loose a few more of the old leaves from this because it weighs them down, however they were most likely going to fall anyway. I have a feeling you may not loose any since a storm really ripped them off the tree. If you have any of the leaves that fell off still lying around you may want to put them in a flatbed scanner and scan them at about 1200dpi and see if you have any spider strings on them as well, if you do, this will justify this treatment a bit further. 2) I would reccomend a good fertilizer to encourage growth, don't burn out the roots, but a good kick may help it out. 3) Re-apply the Malithion about 1-1.5 months later again to make sure the scale (& mites if applicable) is dead, dead, and ohh did I mention dead. Use 1 teaspoon each this time instead of 2 and 1. You may find that the scale may wind up making the tree grow many more leaves than you ever thought it could. Once I killed these suckers off, for every leaf lost I got at minimum 8 leaves and a new shoot off the tree. BTW, my Dunacan Grapefruits are planted from seed, not a graft, just as a note. Hope this helps ya out. VTY -Mark