Robin, OH MY! A lee valley thread...

[Slowhand]

I was reading another thread and realized I have been doing without the newest gardening catalog. Halpppp!! Actualy, I am logging into your website as I write this and requesting it. Happy Holidays. SH

[Mark Hopkins]

Working with wood and digging in the ground. Man! Does it get any better than that? I think not.

"Slowhand"

[Silvan]

Yes. When you add a pond to the mix. We love our ponds so much we grew lazy about the rest of the gardens. It's like a magnet. Sit, listen, watch, don't go weed the flower bed, stay here, listen to the water, listen, to, the, water... ahhhhh....

[Mark Hopkins]

[Greg G.]

Nope, nothin ' better.

If I were so lucky... One pond in dappled shade led to SWMBO wanting another, in the sun, so that night blooming water lilies could grow... Oh, well. What's another 3 ' deep, 400cu.ft. hole in the ground - dug by hand...

Greg G.

[Silvan]

Mine aren't that big. I don't remember how many cubic feet, but about 180 gallons of capacity between the two of them.

Dug by hand, yes, but finished two years ago. The rest has been pleasant.

[Greg G.]

Well, the first was finished summer of 2002 - a poured concrete sill and plant ledges with rock edging, about 480 gallons - and a waterfall. There are fish that live in it all year. Problem is the damned mosquitoes - can't hardly sit outside anymore for the blood suckers. (I live in the South). We had a rainy spring and summer this year, and they just kept breeding. Being in the dappled shade, they're even bold enough to come out and bite you at noon on a full sunny day.

The second is going into a new patio built into a hillside terraced with 6x6 stacked and deadman'd retaining walls. If I though the pond was a PITA, this has it beat by miles! Then, halfway through, the roof started leaking and the water main broke - 10 year old house. I could make a career out of fixing this place - the contractor should have been shot. Yea, it's been a busy year...

Greg G.

[Mark & Juanita]

Isn't your water a bit solid right about now?

[Silvan]

Tiger mosquitoes. A recent addition to our local crop of faunae. Nasty bastards. They don't bother the ponds much though, and the fish eat the larvae before they can hatch.

We have more of a problem from the many tens of thousands of gallons of standing water associated with the various drainage works they built for the new road. Must be at least 20 huge, brackish part-time ponds within a couple miles of my house.

Mine too. The Money Pit we call it.

You have me trumped on the ponds, bigtime. No way I'm that ambitous. SWMBO can get her ass out and dig if she wants a pond that big. :)

[Silvan]

On top, yes. They don't freeze solid. Haven't yet anyway.

[Greg G.]

We keep them out of the pond with B.T. But SWMBO leaves her weeding buckets and the wheelbarrow out in the rain for weeks, hidden behind stuff where I can't see them, and they breed fast. I bring some of the larvae in for the Aquarium fish, so I guess there is one benefit.

Same here, damned money grubbing builders are destroying the entire area. Hardly a tree left standing. And tons of erosion and drainage problems. And the crap they are building has me mystified. Not nice S.F. homes, but $200,000 quads and worse. All this in an area that was once a deeply wooded area of homes with a minimum of 1 acre. We want OUT!

I'm building the next one - on the moon.

For some reason, I saw 'her fat ass' in that sentence...

I've tried putting her to work, but it usually turns ugly. I was on the roof last week, and needed help putting a sheet of plastic over the exposed portion because of a sudden rain. There was a light wind, or I would never have asked. Like a cat, she got up, but couldn't get down. Could not walk down the pitch of the roof to save her life - not even crab style. I laughed so hard, I nearly fell off the roof myself. Needless to say, there was hell to pay THAT night...

Greg G.

[Greg G.]

Ours doesn't freeze solid, only the top inch or so. But that is why the 3' depth - keeps a geothermal warmed/insulated layer on bottom.

Silvan, what part of the country are you located in?

P.S. - It's 11:30pm here, and 57 degrees F. - GA

Greg G.

[Silvan]

I can sympathize. My uncle doesn't actually seem to care at all, but if I were in his shoes, I'd be pissed off. Hadn't been up to his house in years. Used to be there were two houses in the middle of bumfuzzle nowhere, way up on a mountain. Sit in the swing on the hill and see nothing but trees forever.

Now he looks down on the roof of some yellow monstrosity on the other side of a very thin stand of trees. Beyond that, it's pure suburbia, with nothing to see to the horizon but cookie cutter tract housing interspersed with a couple of trees here and there.

Well, OTOH, there are like 500 billion of us now, and most of them live in New York City. If even more city people decided to move out, the country would be worse to live in than it is. We need urban people who want to pay $300,000 for a room inside a building they don't own just to keep a few of our nice wooded areas from being over-run.

I plead the fifth on that one. ;)

My results have been similar. She does dishes and laundry, cooks, goes shopping. I do man stuff. Fix toilets, paint, put in new flooring, dig ponds. That's not gender stereotyping, that's us doing what we don't suck at. She's useless with a shovel or a screwdriver. She's befuddled by the slightest mechanical problem. Why, I found a drawer full of night lights, and asked why so many. She said she couldn't figure out how to change the bulb, so she bought a new one each time. O_o

She doesn't *want* to learn how to do any of this. That's why she married

*me*. Her words, not mine.

[Silvan]

Mine are a bit more shallow than that, but haven't frozen solid. South side, black liners, full sun. Near the house too, which was a bad idea, but I didn't think about it until it was way too late. They're landscaped with dozens of local rocks I got while they were building the road through here, and I hauled at least a ton of good sized rocks one wheelbarrow at a time. They're never moving.

I'm leaving the pumps running this year too. Trying that out to see how it goes. So far, so good. Even the waterfall kept flowing on a 10 degree day. I think 5 degrees is the record low, so I'm expecting to just leave them going. Keeps them cleaner, and reduces the chances of them freezing solid, though it might eventually destroy the pumps.

All the fish are freebies from the fair last year, so I don't really care much what happens to them. I'm not a fish kind of guy.

Mountains of Virginia. Zone 6b. It's... Um. I have no idea, probably

30-something out there.

[Mark Hopkins]

[Mark Hopkins]

[Greg G.]

I assume you mean Stone Mountain? And as for the villiage, I'm not sure where that is. Anywhere near Avondale Estates?

Greg G.

[Greg G.]

O.K. I remember now... The last time I spent any time over there was years ago, visiting Lucien Harris, the 'famous' Georgia Lepidopterist.

It has gotten too crowded over ther for my taste these days. Like it is getting over here! I grew up here, when Atlanta had a population of.. oh... 250,000. the old Grist Mill, Confederate Generals carved on a rock, laser light shows in the summer... yea, I remember...

Just got back from Highland Hardware - I hate going there. I always leave feeling so... empty...

Greg G.

[Mark Hopkins]

Going to Highland Hardware is a religious experience! They always tell me they are closing too soon! The village is nice. Not too many folks in the city at all. Just the small town atmosphere. I like that. The park is now run by those folks that run "Dollywood". To commercial for me. Not like it used to be at all.

Mark

[Greg G.]

It's a religious experience all right. The tithes will break you. I picked up a Bandsaw riser kit and WoodSlicer blade.

I like the small town thing, but it's hard to ignore that you are still surrounded by masses.

I would not like that...

I live in unincorporated Cobb County. They want to call it West Vinings. I want them to go to ... well you get the idea...

I left Atlanta in 1992 to escape the masses and lived in Florida for

10 years, but they showed up there as well. Ended up back here because of a job at Hi-Fi Buys.

Greg G.