I absolutely do intend to buy a sump pump. I tried to buy one today, in fact, but the store was out of the model I wanted. I will probably buy one this weekend at a different store. Dicot, unfortunately gravity doesn't work in my favor. Everything in the whole neighborhood is located higher than my drainage ditch, which is why I've never been able to get the drainage ditch to actually drain. The sump pump should take care of that, though! Al, could you recommend a website with instructions for installing a more permanent drainage solution? I would be more than happy to spend $50 on it; I'm just not confident of my ability to install it successfully. Flora, my spreadsheet also shows which plants have died in my garden, so that I can stop planting them. I have been adding more and more clustered field sedge, because it seems to do well and I like it. I also added a second golden currant earlier this year, for the same reasons. But I also like to experiment with new plants when my research suggests they should work. Even if the plants die, I'll probably learn something about them that I can use when we eventually buy a place and I start a whole new garden. Kris, I have been adding coarse woodchip mulch, steer manure, and homemade compost about 8 to 12 times per year since August 2008. The soil just swallows it right up at the next rainstorm. It does have some lasting effect - when I dig down in the lowest-lying areas of the yard (along the fence shown in the left 2/3 of my photos), the top four or five inches of soil have large woodchips all through them, even though the top surface just looks like mud. The foreground of my photos shows the slightly higher portion of the yard, though, and nothing I've added has seemed to have much effect there. I think a lot of the mulch and compost just washes down to the lower spots. I probably should dig more of it in. Thank you, everyone, for your suggestions - especially the suggestion of a sump pump!

I realize this is an older thread, but you might want to check out the Farm life forum. Lots of talk about the same issue there. Advice on stopping hawk from killing chickens "I have been reading posts on this site and everyone keeps saying hawks won't disturb anything above 4lbs... I just caught a hawk eating one of my chickens yesterday afternoon." A link that might be useful: forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/ farmlife/msg0515452820753.html?12

I just did a wikipedia search on heating oil. Heating oil has 138,500 btu's per u.s. gallon. I'm assuming thats gross btu's. So you would have to have 100% efficiency to get that. I also did a wikipedia search on therm. It says 1 therm is equal to 100,000 btu's. Thats 100% efficiency ofcourse. 1 therm or 100,000 btu's is equal to about 100 cubic feet of natural gas. 100 cubic feet is 1/10th of a metric cubic foot (MCF). Right now my natural gas costs .90 cents with all fee's delivered to my house per ccf. I think it takes about 1.3 ccf to equal the btu's in 1 gallon of heating oil. Heating oil would have to get down to about $1.25 per gallon to provide the same amount of btu's as natural gas at the price of .90 cents per ccf. Keep mind the price of natural gas usually goes up in winter. Its also kind of cheap right now. Its been higher in the past. Lets look at heatpumps. At 47 degrees fahrenheit my 3.0 ton 15 seer unit produces 36,000 btu per hour. It uses 2.82 kilowatts per hour. My electricity is .11 cents per kilowatt hour delivered. Thats about $.87 cents per therm. or 100,000 btu's. Keep in mind that the btu numbers for oil and gas are less then the numbers mentioned. The number mentioned are raw heat. Your furnace will get 95% for gas and a different % for oil. You don't have that problem with heatpumps. The btu's mentioned are the real thing. The heatpump will go into defrost mode sometimes and waste energy. If electricity is a good price heat pumps can be cost effective down to low temperatures. Some utilities give discounts if you consume alot of have heatpumps. If electricity costs .20 cents per kw it might not be a good deal. Its nice to have the heatpump option atleast incase fossil fuels skyrocket again.

This is so sad. My niece was in Nice, and returned the day before the attack, so it really hit home for us. This is the reason I am opposed to the plans to bring a million unknown, unvetted refugees into this country. The terrorists already hate America--why bring them here to hurt us?