Lawns are a lot easier than you are being told. There are two extremely popular grasses in the south. One is bermuda and the other is St Augustine. Bermuda is a fine bladed grass which requires extra care every week while St Augustine grass is a coarse bladed grass. There are two kinds of bermuda: one is a hybrid which only slightly resembles the "wild" varieties, and the other is common bermuda which is started from seed. This bermuda seed is the only grass seed that makes sense in the south. If you mix the two kinds of bermuda, it will always and forever look weedy. The two different kinds of grass just look different. The hybrid looks really nice most of the time. The common looks so-so most of the time unless you really spend a lot of time and money on it. Really both require a lot of care when compared with St Augustine. Bermuda is a FULL SUN type of grass. If it is in the shade of a building, fence, or shrubbery/trees, it will thin out and look poor. Bermuda can go dormant in the winter and when it does not get regular water. St Augustine comes in many varieties. The common variety is rarely seen anymore. The others are all hybrids with different degrees of tolerance for shade, disease, and drought. St Augustine is the only grass in the south that can tolerate much shade, and it can tolerate a lot. In full sun it becomes very dense and very resistant to weeds. The Floratam variety works best in bright sun but will be a little thin in deep shade. When selecting St Augustine what matters most is what's available in your neighborhood. If you find some of a certain variety, please write back and we can explain the pros and cons for the ones you can get. One interesting thing about St Augustine is that you can care for it such that it will wipe out other grasses. All it takes is proper water, mowing, and fertilizer. The difference between proper care for bermuda and St Augustine is slight but important if you want one or the other. If you start with just a few pieces of St Augustine, with proper care it can cover a yard in 2 years. If you want instant lawn, this won't work, but if you are patient, it will work. In fact I just bought a new home with no grass and will be doing the same thing. Sorry I'm being called to dinner. There's more to say, but you might have some more questions.

Fatamorgana has put it very well indeed. Rosemary is very slow to start with, and yours is very much still an infant. Give it another couple of years, and then it'll take off. Rule of thumb put another way: the longer a plant's life-expectancy, the slower it is to grow. A huge forest tree can take hundreds of years to reach maturity. Some annuals can live their entire life-cycle in a matter of a couple of weeks. Rosemary can live more than 30 years. And Rhizo is correct, too. Think of plants as being not unlike people in many ways. You can feed up your children to the eyeballs, but they won't grow up any faster - you'll just be making them unhealthy by over-feeding! Rosemary does better with a lean diet.

Thanks, Michelle, I think I can understand maybe 10 cylces or so. But hey, whatever - like I said, it's the hardware affecting durability and servicability that I want to talk about, and most people at the store just give you a stammering reply there. My Maytag died after 6 years, which is atrocious IMHO. The bearings seized on the motor. No, you can't change them, it's a new motor and belt for $130, with me doing the work. I want to have some idea that if I dump a grand into a washing machine, I'm buying a good motor and drum and solenoid valves and hoses, not fancy firmware that ends up shorting out due to insuffcient control housings. But at least I know I don't need steam! Thanks, all! BTW I'm leaning towards a Bosch 500 (WFMC5301UC). Hoping the door mold issue is gone, and hoping someone knows something about them. Looks like either that or the LG TROMM, but I like the layout of the Bosch's controls and the way the door frame allows easier access to the drum. But I guess that's kind of wondering off-topic for this thread. I'm searching for info here and elsewhere, so thought I'd mention it.

yes take down that piece of wood and replace it with a larger one, it can actually be part of the look if you make it larger , pick the light then build the block to suit it... this is childs play in the lighting world. the real issue is the placement that thing is SO high and above the door jam? make sure the fixture you pick hangs down. if he cant figure that out, then higher someone who can. remember you pay him. don't let them dictate the outcome. in fact, he can even mess around with lowering the mounting of it if you have a larger surface area.