Sounds like your doing O.K. with your plants. As far as taking the phals. outside or not, you will get people on both sides of the fence. I personally never took my phals. outside when I was growing under lights. I think you did the correct thing in bringing the oncidium and cattleya outside as once they get used to the higher light can take almost straight sun all day long. I don't know if you know it or not but the nobile oncidiums are easy to rebloom but due require a certain treatment to get them there. Please check out Yamamato Orchids. There is lots to read there especially about fertilizing nobile's only up to a certain date and then they need a 30 day period of at least one hour of cool weather. Check it out at : http://www.yamamotodendrobiums.com/html/general_care.html I do have a greenhouse but have started to enjoy the nobile dendorbium. A few months ago I bought a half dozen of them out of bloom. This is the only orchid that I own that is currently outside in New York, U.S.A.

One thing you will need to purchase and learn to use is a pond test kit. Doing a test every week or so allows you to keep your water healthy and clear. Things that can mess up water chemistry are overfeeding, fish poop and other organics like the muck at the bottom of the pond, heat, insufficient oxygen, rainwater and a bunch of other things. Most of the bad things can be caught early with the test kit. Don't waste money on test strips. They are often inaccurate. Not all shop vacs are designed to pump out the water continuously. It will say on the box that it has a pump feature. I found mine for $85. There are other devices that work with water running from a water hose. The one I use most often for a quick fix is this type. It's found at WalMart and is for childrens pools. It costs $20. I am looking for one of a similar design with better construction. It is just plain flimsy and repairs don't last. Python also puts out a similar device. It is hard to hold, the capture jar is too large around for me to open and it is overpriced at $89.It is complicated. The shop vac removes water. You can run the hose that you attach to it to your garden. The dirty water is good fertilizer. The other two add water to the pond so I pump some water out with a sump pump or I drain the filtration tank. Either way is simple to do, even for someone with my current physical problems. LOL, sometimes I must be a sight to see. The fishies sometimes get curious but if you keep the nozzle moving slowly, they will lose interest without getting scared. Are you saying the pump and tubing are not submerged? If so, it is a different type of pump than I use. That isn't a problem but we need to get another forum member to discuss them. Mine are submerged and I hesitate to give advice on a type I have no real experience with. The other things function enough alike that I don't have a problem talking about them. If I do, someone else will be along. While the pond is dirty, that foam filter in front of the pump will need to be cleaned fairly often, just like Sheepco says. Most pumps can handle dirty water with some small abount of debris but larger debris needs to be stopped from going into the impeller as it can cause damage. I hate that tiny little filter. It is just too inefficient for words. I found a prefilter for a well pump at Menards. I used some stepdown PVC connectors, also at Menards to make it fit the tubing. It keeps anything above the size of a small pea from entering the pump and a decent pump can handle that with no problem. I threw away the tiny foam filter that came with the pump. The water exits the pump and tubing runs to a 100 gallon Stock tank which is my mechanical filtration It also serves as a home for the bacteria that cleans up organic matter in the water. That black bucket thing behind your waterfall is likely to be a mechanical and bio filter. The details are just a little different. My filter is called a Skippy Filter. It is not the only design out there. I just happen to like playing with this kind of stuff. Another small pond I have the care of changes drastically every year. No matter what kind of system you are using you should look at how effecient it is, whether it works for you and if it does what it is supposed to. There are many sites that explain how filter systems work. To see how my skippy works, google Skippy stuff. My pond is 1000 gallons so my system is probably oversized, but I want to enlarge it this year or next. I have to get my body working first then I can use it as physical therapy! You have either EPDM or plastic(PVC)as a liner. If it feels like rubber it is EPDM. EPDM is rubber, just like they use in innertubes or on roofs. 45 mil is best but it comes in a thinner version as well. The plastic liner isn't as durable but some people do like it. To figure out how many gallons your pond holds(useful for medications, additives, pump size, etc.)go to the link named pond volume calculator at the end of this post. Then you can figure out how much water you have, how much your pump should be moving, how many fish inches you can support and all sorts of other things. If you don't like this one, there are others. That is likely to be enough for now. As you think of questions just add on. Enjoy, Sandy Here is a link that might be useful: pond volume calculator

Well, today I bit the bullet, and got 'er done. Everyone recommended I add "oil dry" to the mix, so I went down to the local NAPA store and got the smallest bag they had....probably enough to last the rest of my life unless I spill the grease the next few times I fry fish. Since I had already made enough mix to fill the selected pot (thats a joke!)and it contained sand which some of you recommended against, but I couldn't get out, I just added a measure of the oil dry to the existing mix. Next step was removing the plant from its pot....Turning it over and tapping the pot on the bottom did NOT work! I struggled for over ten minutes before I convinced that plant to turn that pot loose, and when it did come out, it just kept on, and on, and on coming out. You've been to the circus and seen 10 clowns get out of a car the size of a large suitcase......Well, I'm convinced Adeniums taught them how to do that. There was more plant in that pot than I would have ever thought possible. None of the pots I had considered using was going to work, so the search began all over again. I finally found one thats a bit small, but will work for a while. Photo #4 shows what I got out of that pot. There was a large swolen root that had been just below the surface, and another much smaller root on the opposite side. I trimmed all the small roots off the smaller one, and left both of them on the plant, thinking they might add interest in later years (hows that for a new grower being optimistic). There was a small cluster of roots on the back side of this photo that was growing above the old soil line, and a little "button" of an old root stub that was starting to grow a new root, so I took both of these off flush with the Caudex. I removed a few of the more flimsy looking bunches of tiny roots, and thats about all. Photo #5 shows what I put in the new pot. The swolen root is on the left, and the one I am going to try to get to match it is on the right trimmed of all its small roots. Photo #6 is the final product. The plant is raised about 2 inches, and shows the large swolen root on the right, and the new smaller one on the left. You can see the spot near the center of the Caudex where I cut off a small patch of roots that were growing above the old soil line. I intend to leave the plant on the porch for two or three days to allow it to dry and heal the cuts I made, then will slowly reintroduce it to the sun until it is again in pretty much full sun, and being fed and watered on a regular basis...like every couple of days. I know I probably did as many things wrong as I did right, (I would consider 50-50 a real accomplishment) But I do believe things went pretty well, and now the challenge will be to grow this (to me) strange new plant. Thanks everyone for the help and encouragement. I have been lurking around here for some time, soaking up the knowlege you good folks have been putting out.....I guess today was exam day...Thanks. Bill

Grover any chance you can show me what it would look like with no railing and pulling the left side of the steps a bit more to the left (towards the end of the window) i was just looking at greige color schemes and I’m feeling super over whelmed. looks like a darker warm brown with a light grey compliments and contrasts with each (went through your color schemes) so now im thinking... the silver traverntine for the top of the steps and the top of the porch with a more brown stack stone color for the pillar, and light post? Or should I reverse it? Make a darker slate for the top of the porch/steps and a lighter grey with warm tones for the stack stone? God... I’m going crazy