As I'm looking at your photo, to the right of the yews under the window, it appears you have some weed trees, including a norway maple and perhaps some kind of ash or whatever. At any rate, remove those, they want to be huge trees and are way out of size for your lot. They will just get larger and larger and larger and larger until they eat up your house. Chop them down if you can't spade them out, and paint the trunks with Roundup becuase they will sprout from the trunks. Keep pruning down the sprouts and painting with Roundup. You can cover the trunks with bark or stones while waiting for the trees to finally die. Dig them out if you can, or cut down below soil level, but like I said, it will take some persistence because they will sprout up again. You have yews under your window. Hard to keep those babies small and pruned, unless they are dwarf varieties which I doubt. The hedge doesn't look to great but maybe I'm missing something. Why are all the hedge plants bare and yet the other vegetation has leafed out? Did you just prune them after this photo was taken? If you're going for a japanese theme, (maybe with th bamboo) then maybe a japanese maple is a good thing for the middle. There is a yard near me that has something like that, I'll have to take a photo of it. Make sure to get a CLUMPING bamboo otherwise you'll be fighting it, a regular bamboo is really innapropriate for such a small yard, unless you get the right species. You might even be able to grow it in a large pot over those stumps until they give up the ghost.

Hi dchall_san_antonio, thanks for the follow-up post. You are spot on with regards to the unevenness of sod. I did my front yard last season and was instantly dissatisfied with the results with regard to the undulations. So I had to spend more time and more effort to get a result that I wanted from the outset. Hence my obsession was born with having a perfectly level yard. I searched the internet determined to get a better result. I read about sprigging, but found almost zero info on how the regular Joe could do it at home. I took bits of info from golf green construction, sport fields, bowling greens and then applied this to what would work at home for me using everyday tools and non-specialized products. The cost was also significantly less than buying sod for the entire project which is quite expensive in Australia (around A$9.00m2) I will try by best to answer the questions that you have put forth; My patio area faces roughly east, so the sun passes directly over the yard in summer. In winter it moves to the north (the left hand side looking from patio). Long shadows do cast to the south, however more so in winter as the sun is lower in sky. I cultivated the soil using a rotary hoe or a gas powered tiller to till the soil to a depth of around 6 inches. I then made a contraption of 4 x 6 foot pieces of timber set parallel with 4 x braces running perpendicular to the long pieces. I attached a rope to this and then spent the next few days dragging this contraption back and forth, round and round, up and down until it was as level as I could make it. I let it settle for about 2 weeks, then spent another weekend with my new wooden friend. I got the idea from this video; Leveling yard After this I brought in around 2 cubic meters of builders sand for final grade. I built a smaller version of the wood , this time using aluminum and a handle that you use like a rake to move the soil around. I then watered this to the point of runoff and let it dry. I used the lawn level again to level out any minor undulations and watered it again. Finally I used a long piece of timber to check for grade and undulations. At this point I was satisfied. The high tech tools used to cut up the sod was a pair of garden shears and a pair of HD sissors! No wonder my hands were dead after about 6 hours. I put the cut sprigs into a big container of water for about an hour, then put them in a old wet sheet in the shade until I was ready to broadcast them. I made sure I had enough to cover one irrigation zone before I spread them such that i could irrigate immediately after planting. Once I realised that this method was not going to work I borrowed a leaf shredder and put smaller pieces of sod through the hopper. At first I was concerned that I cut them too small and they would not root, but they did take, however at a slower rate than compared with the larger pieces. I did this in October, which is mid-spring here. Funnily enough we had a really mild spring which didn't really help with the grow-in. When temps got above 25C you could literally watch it grow! This is not common practise for establishing home lawns in Australia. Some turf suppliers do offer what they call 'shredded turf' but these companies are not in my state. The methods these companies advocate could not be translated the method I used. Next time I would try and actually source the sprigs, rather than cutting up sod. It is so time consuming and very messy. Other than that I am really happy with how it has come up. I said to my wifey that if I ever plant another lawn I will be stolonizing it. The real reason I wanted to spend the time doing this post is purely for the fact that I have learned so much from this forum (even as a lurker) and I wanted to take the time and give something back to other forum members who have taken the time with their experiences. In particular David's thread which I used to level my front yard. Here are some pics of that project if anyone is interested; Front This is disc roller below; PS I will work on my photography skills This post was edited by SimonR on Mon, Jan 27, 14 at 0:35

I apologize for being late to the party, but being a little woman (5'4", 120 lbs) with a little tiller (Mantis) I thought I'd wade right in. My soil is heavy clay. Unless soil conditions are PERFECT for the mantid, it either cannot till at all (bouncing maniacally on the surface), or gets fouled with debris within two minutes. The mantid cannot be used to till in organic matter, whether unbroken sod, live green manure, or dead dried manure in any stage. Anything that is not soil will rapidly wrap itself around the axles of the mantid, forcing you to stop every five minutes to try to remove the debris without burning yourself. You'll need to take off the wheels in the process each time to get to the debris on each side of each wheel. That being said, it does a good job, if you work within its limitations. The soil has to be relatively free of debris, and not wet, but not bone dry, either. You'll need to work back and forth a few times for the tiller to dig down and really turn the soil. I also use the mantid quite a bit to trench areas for irrigation mains and conduit for security cameras. I've also got the edger, which I plan to (but haven't yet attempted) to use to give my garden beds a crisp edge for easier mowing. I have found that I can start the mantid quite easily, and control the bucking adequately. One has to have a strong spirit to fight with the bucking beast at times, however.

There is a company that makes a product called E T Air Ride. www.ztpuffer.com You mount this air ride system on your mower then mount your current seat on top of it. If you have a seat that slides you can still slide your seat. It raises your seat a few inches so you need to build some wood platform to support your body, no big deal. You hook the power side to the ignition switch so it shuts off when you shut mower off. John Deere dealer was helping me get the correct wire. I'm looking forward to using it as my tailbone is sore. Age has nothing to do with it. Lawnmower manufacturers don't want to spend the extra money to build this into their mowers.