Really neat. I live in Flour Bluff on the east side of Corpus Christi, and I am wanting to build a natural pond in my sandy backyard using clay and then lining the bottom with white rock and limestone. I want to make the pond look like the Comal River in New Braunfels ( a natural spring fed river) and plant it and stock it with plants and fish from the river. I live in a Zone 10A climate (nearly tropical) with an average annual low of about 31F. I have a tropically landscaped backyard, and I think having a natural spring looking pond would be awesome underneath my jungle canopy I am starting to grow in the backyard. I would like to make the pond about 10 - 12 feet long, about 8 ft. wide and about 4. 5 - 5 ft. deep. with a small waterfall and filtration for the fish and aquatic life. I would like to power this with a small solar panel attached to the fence or the roof of the house (where it can get some sunlight). Any suggestions? Thanks, John

We finally got started planting behind the raised bond beam! Talk about a lot of work! We had to build a retaining wall behind the curved portion of the wall with Castlerock, and those things are heavy! I haven't planted anything along the new sundeck, but hope to start that today. We also still have four Pygmy Date Palms for behind the raised bond beam, that we have to plant. Two will flank either side of the CI Date Palm for some added privacy. Here is a close up of the area we planted: I'm super pleased with the look of the ferns. We're lucky in that we only get about 1 hour of direct sun there a day, and it's from about 5:30PM - 6:30PM. Hopefully these Kimberly Queens will thrive there. I looked forever, before finding these bowls for the lower portions of the bond beam. There is a really good nursery, showcased in Southern Living, in a nearby town. They're my go-to place for hard-to-find Texas plants, and they have awesome decorative items. The bowls look amazingly like Oklahoma Wister flagstone! I've planted this combo before. It'll be white in the back (Angelonia), Liriopi in the middle as a perennial, and eventually the purple Scaevola and New Gold Lantana should spill over the front. With the Blue Plumbago in the back, the color combo should look nice. In about a month, it should be totally full. All I'll have to do is change out the annuals each season for color. The fence is in. Now all we have left is the flagstone inlay and the flagstone on the steps and we're done!

Thanks for the detailed reply. I am doing a pool with them now in NJ. I am still reserving judgment until I finish the whole process but so far I am frustrated with the rate progress. I had heard and read so many stories about how work is slow and delayed that I really grilled them on this. The sales/design guy said delays between phases of work were a "thing of the past" and that they build so many fewer pools now that it is a "non-issue." I even specifically said since the work will be done in spring when it rains a lot, I know we will have rain days but wanted to know if rain days led to getting re-scheduled to the back of the list and caused a lot of dry day delays. Again, "oh no, definitely not. Nothing like that." Bottom line he said even with typical rain delays I should get from dig to swimming in 8 weeks. Before the dig it could take "up to a month" if the Township holds up the permits� I signed in early March. They dug the hole 31 days later. The Township approved the permit within one working day of receiving it, except for the part A&S forgot to file (new employee I am told � I only found this out because I have a contact in the Township). A&S then took a week to file that part and then just mailed it. Township turned it over almost immediately again. But it took a couple weeks to get the dig scheduled. The hole was dug two weeks ago and counting. That�s where it stands. They did have the steel crew come out about a week later but some of the dirt had slid back into the site so they left and said the diggers had to return. They finally did and it took them and hour in-and-out and they were done very early that morning. Still no sign of the steel crew and from communicating with the scheduler it is definitely the case that I am at the back of a list again, despite being told it didn�t work that way. Of course if they wait long enough it will rain again and more dirt will slide back into the hole and we�ll just have to do this song and dance again. In the best case scenario now it will have been 19 days between the first day of actual work (which took half-a-day) and the next (which will likely take only half a day too). The bottom line is I understand rain delays but I have had more dry day delays than rain so far, and that goes directly against my asked-and-answered questions about how the process would work. BTW, to your other comments, at least where I am they seem to mostly use Jandy equipment. I wish they used Pentair because I wanted to use their control system that had the iPhone/iPad interface. They said they could only install the Jandy PDA system and wouldn�t even quote the Pentair. They use AquaCal for heat pumps, which they strongly pushed as the preferred heating method, and Raypak for propane heaters, Haward for LED lighting and Polaris for sweeps. And they strongly push the Nature2 Fusion system over doing a saltwater chlorinator. They reluctantly quoted a saltwater chlorinator after some prodding but it was ridiculously more expensive that just getting one installed after the fact and they offered zero credit to remove the Fusion system if you did it and were going to force me to sign something that basically indemnified them against any premature damage to the coping or the stone on the raised bond beam. They do use Jason�s as their servicing company. I don�t know if they do the plumbing too since I haven�t gone to that yet. They use Corbin for the electrical.

Hello all, We are still swimming here in Southern California. I got the pool up to 83 degrees last week with solar heating only and the kids were swimming very happily. We should have another small heat wave coming next week with temperatures in the eighties again. I have never looked at the weather report as much as the last few weeks since the pool was done. njfolks: The stone is called Red Mountain. Mostly grey with some beautiful rust colors here and there. All the stone (flag and stacked) is that same stone. I had them replace several pieces on the flag stone that was flaking badly - but the rest has been fine. As with any stone, there will be a few bad pieces here and there. Just make sure they don't install those pieces. I wish I could take credit for the design - but it was the builder's designer who made our smaller yard into all that entertainment space. Here are some nightime pictures of the fire pit: