Wonbyherwits - that is sort of like I was thinking - maybe a little bigger. Basically, the way the county people described it to me, I should be able to buy the big (10"-12" diameter) black corrugated plastic pipe with Y-shaped "wings" on the ends, that would sort of serve as a funnel to collect the runoff and channel it down into the pipe. But I would want the wings to be only off to the sides, not on the top or bottom, since this pipe has to sit flush on the ground (the ground is too unstable from erosion to dig into it).

I know this is long, Heidi, but I've got personal experience with your situation. To be brief, I'm confident that this tree is not even close to death's door, and would be much better served by fixing the causes of its decline now so it can green up and be much healthier to deal with the stress of repotting next summer. In particular, your ficus was thriving until three months ago, and we know that the decline was caused by low light and poor watering, which means that fixing the root congestion and soil aren't an emergency. To be clear, gardengal is probably right that you could repot now without killing the tree, but because it would be easy to get it green again by correcting the biggest problems now, you would be best off waiting until summer to do major root work and put it in a great growing medium. Then you will be rewarded with a burst of new growth, and you'll soon be pinching growing tips and pruning to control its enthusiastic growth and tell it to fill in all those gaps left by dropped leaves. My experience: I have two smaller roughly five year old ficuses that were completely rootbound and were stuck in a dim corner. I often forgot about watering until leaves started yellowing and dropping, and the I'd fill their tall plastic 'saucers' and left the water there until they stopped soaking it up. In other words, I drowned the roots every time I watered, and maximized the amount of deadly mineral deposits in the soil. Aside from feeble attempts to maintain a few leaves, they had almost stopped growing entirely because their depleted energy reserves made them more vulnerable to attack and only allowed them to put our a few leaves at a time, and most of the buds and leaves that appeared were killed by spider mites. But these are tough plants, so they clung to life for about three years before I finally cared enough to search for answers and found these forums. I immediately started treating the mite infestation, thoroughly flushed the pots (I swear I could hear them sigh with relief), fertilized with a weak solution of Foliage Pro, which has a great ratio of basic nutrients plus all the micronutrients plants need, moved it in front of my best window, which only provides mediocre light, and added bright white (not soft white) 5000k 100W led and cfl bulbs in clamp-on fixtures. Two months later, each branch has about half a dozen new leaves, including some emerging near the stem (a sign that the tree is getting better). It's wonderful to see them getting so green, and I'm already reading up on how to prune them when they get growing again. So Heidi, if I were in your place, I'd start by checking the leaves for spider mites with a bright light and a magnifying glass (they're tiny red dots on the leaves, and you may see little bits of webs on the leaves our branches). Ask about treatment if you find any. Then I'd flush the pot (details below), fertilize with a 3:1:2 ratio fertilizer (miracle gro general purpose granules are easy to find and the right ratio), move it to the best window I had, and put two 100 or brighter led or cfl bulbs in it for 12 hours a day, using a timer. From then on, check soil moisture by pushing a sharpened 3/8" dowel all the way through to the bottom of the pot, and DO NOT WATER until the dowel comes out completely clean and dry (at that point there's still a lot of water inside the soil particles). When that happens, water until about 15% of the water exits the drain holes, let it drain, and then either tilt the pot at 45 degrees for 15-30 minutes after watering to remove excess water, or insert a wick into a drain hole and raise the pot up so the wick won't come in contact with the drained water. You can wait until the surface of the soil is dry to start checking the soil moisture, but after that you should check daily until you have a feel for how long it takes for the poor to dry up. About flushing: flush with lukewarm water, using about ten times the pot's capacity, then give it a weak solution of fertilizer. Use R/O (reverse osmosis) water if possible; water from supermarket water machines are usually $.39 per gallon, and that little pot will maybe need two or three gallons to do the job. My water is hard, so I used R/O water to flush, and because my tap water is hard I use water from my cheap faucet-mounted filter for regular watering. And the reason midsummer is the best time to do something stressful is that 1) ample summer sunlight generates much more energy from the leaves than even a lot of winter sunlight can provide, and 2) the plant is programmed to put energy into new growth in summer, whereas in winter it wants to store it for use in the spring. From several people's experience, including Al (talks), who knows whereof he speaks, if you take two healthy plants and repot one now and one next June, the second will be in better shape next fall than the one you repotted a year earlier. Sorry for my rambling post, and I hope it helps at least a little.

It reminded me of Jonathan Adler..a very colorful guy in all senses..rather, him saying in one of his books he doesn't like neutrals-unless they're from nature, like clay, or yarn, or stone, or wood, or.. When in nature-whatever it might be-we're deeply touched by very different settings ..I don't know why but let's pretend that's because there's invisible hand of the Master that put it all together, and we don't know another worlds, not yet, so we are touched by ours. When in home-if one can get one seventieth of that Master's touch..it changes our general connotations. Because there's texture, variation, light, all this, yes-plus something made by hand, taking this natural things, clay and wood, etc, and working on them, and loving them while working. Simple things-yet they all get to sing. I know this because for example I also have variated terracotta tile in the bath-and it's less variated, just three colors..and it's textured custom too..and we were there when the guys from the shop were working on color and texture , working on samples, showing them to us..we waited with them, we were witnesses to that process, and you see the real excitement and passion that goes into creating and playing with things like that. (they liked the pallette themselves and made a sample of it for the store, and called it "April's". lol) And this excitement, passion and patience is what probably makes what was clay and wood shine under that light. It brings together what they are-natural materials-and what people with passion and patience wished them to be, and got them to be. So. That's why I love my grays and my browns.. Even though my house is pretty colorful-no one will call it neutral It's true, they remind me some scenes from my childhood which I percieve as happy. And all sorts of things. The juxtaposition. Of course I prefer certain grays and certain browns, that's normal. For example I love mostly very warm grays. And (surprize) mostly warm browns)) But also because some of them, I witnessed to be made, I knew them to be painstaikingly made, or I knew nobody made it, it was created like that- and I was just lucky to spot it, like a piece of gray marble with golden rusty streaks..and it makes it a bit more magical. Sense of discovery can come in many shapes. It can be quiet and subdued. And nothing we generaly like even maybe. Yet it still will be a sense of discovery. I would love to do truly neutral room one day, just like a challenge even. yet I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to pull it off..

Silver, be sure to acclimate to stronger light gradually over a period of weeks increasing the length of time kept in direct sunlight. An hour or so a day for the first few days increasing the length of time until it's in full sun all the time...or at least for the number of hours you can provide. Otherwise it will burn. I don't know where you are located but noon to sunset where I live is much stronger that the weak sun is from sunrise to noon. Also, once it gets better light, keep in mind that the current leaves will never revert back to their former appearance, but new growth should improve. Good luck.