Janet..thanks for sharing your gardens. I hope you can take some of your beautiful iris, hostas, columbines, etc. with you on your move. Yes, junk "evolves"...thank goodness! It will be a new challenge for you all...starting over! And your creations will be wonderful! I live near New Hartford where so many people lost everything with the tornado and then the floods this summer... 240 homes out of 270...many that NEVER flooded before. We are in the country so personal property not affected by the floods. We are helping "re-build" our town again. School will be opening on schedule Aug. 18th. So many volunteers still coming in! AWESOME! I've rattled on...but I am so glad you shared with this post...a story of more "survivors!" Thanks again for sharing. Jeanne S.

sleepless, Thanks for the exchange. Quote; "Just how dirty is the 5 gallons of stone you remove each year and how do you remove it? I assume you put it back under the water falls" I put on my pond shoes and get in with a bucket and a plastic one quart mug. Then scoop up the gravel and transfer it to the bucket. I redistribute the gravel to the other two levels of the pond. The lowest spot is not very dirty. No muck, just small bits of hard black stuff (leaf stems and parts left over from winter maybe?). They are light enough that they suspend when stirred up and get pulled into the skimmer. "Does it develop the typical packing that settling filters develop? What is the slope of the liner? Is there a bottom drain?" No packing. No slope to speak of. It has three stepped depths, 6" then 18" then 24". Under the falls is about 18". There is no bottom drain. The gravel migrates from water turbulence under the falls and my fish always poking around in the gravel and pushing it from the upper to lower levels. "How often do you clean the filter? What type of filter?" I guess its the typical Aquascape setup. A skimmer with basket, filter pad and submersible pump. A 2" line goes to an off the shelf Bio falls with 2 filter pads and bio balls. I empty the skimmer basket as needed to keep the water flowing through it and wash the filter pad only once or twice per season. I don't clean the filter pads in the falls until I shut down my pump for winter. This may be shocking to some people but I let the good bacteria do the work. I also never drain the pond and clean it. Most of my maintenance time is spent tending to the plants (cutting out the ugly stuff ) netting out every leaf that I can find till shutdown in the fall and rearranging rocks. Mike K

I'm not nearly as worried about what my employers think as I am about what you all will think... Yup, I can understand your trepidation. This group is so critical and vicious, posting a picture here is just asking for a public ripping, up one side and down the other. I'm sure you will be reduced to a whimpering boneless mass of embarrassment when we get done with you. Just kidding, of course. Show us some pics as soon as you can, please. ThinMan

Gail, Nice to meet you. Welcome back, although I don't think I was playing here when you were. They sure are right when they refer to themselves as Enablers-R-Us. In the past few months I have been "forced" to buy all kinds of dishes, glasses, silverware, and linens. All of which I never knew I wanted until I came over here!! LOL TTFN, Candy