The bone I would ask for is flowering trees on the slope. Surely, they will not leave bare earth as the finished product so you can figure that there will be some sort of groundcover on the slope... which, depending on how all of this relates to their facility, may become an unattended weedy, green "natural area." People post pictures of such areas here from time to time and, oddly, others fawn over how lovely such "natural" areas are. You might find out how they're planning on treating this slope/berm as their solution might already be sufficient and your asking for something different to be interjected into it might actually create a less desirable finished product. Several years back one of my best friends lived at the edge of our town in a house that had been the family home for decades. Then the state decided to build an interstate highway less than 1/2 mile to the south. And a corporation decided to build a plant nearby. Since there was nothing between my friend's family home and the interstate but cornfield, and it was decimated during the multi-year-long project, my friend was at her wits end during the whole process, thinking that her life and property was forever ruined. She attended every meeting relevant to the construction of the projects, wrote letters to every person involved, complained constantly and was basically consumed by the construction process until the road and plant was finished (about 3 or so years ?) Once all the construction equipment was gone and the landscaping was in place, everything calmed down. It wasn't all that much time after that my friend stopped giving any of it a thought. Today, I'm sure she never even thinks about what seemed like so much grief at the time. (She still lives in the same house.)

Linnea2, "I just have these large areas of Mugwort that I can't mow." Well, with a shredder-chipper you will still have to pull the Mugwort and feed it to the machine, and that in itself will be a lot of work for you. Even though the shredder chipper is on wheels to move around from one worksite to another, it remains stationary while you feed it to produce the shredded product. And then you will have to manually put the shredded product into a compost pile or bin. I wouldn't want you to be under the illusion that the shredder-chipper does all the work for you. Basically it just shreds whatever you feed into it and discharges the shredded product partly under the machine and partly out in front of it. While I am shredding, every few minutes I use a hoe or shovel to pull the material out from under the machine out into a big pile in front of it. After I finish a shredding session I transfer the material from the pile to my compost pile(s). I use a big red plastic one-bushel basket to help with that. I can carry a bushel of shredded product on my shoulder. I have my compost piles near my shredder-chipper so I don't have to carry the product very far. Finely shredded material has a lot of surface area, so it composts rather fast. I have a , which is the predecessor to the MacKissic 12PT10 that dmullen has. Mine has a 9hp Briggs&Stratton INTEK 4-cycle gas engine, while his has a 10hp B&S engine. Otherwise, I think our machines are the same. My engine starts on the second pull when cold and usually on the first pull when warm. Starting it is no problem and, for me, an electric starter would be superfluous. But they are available at extra cost. Like dmullen, I purchased several optional screens for my machine so I can choose what texture my shredded product will have. For rapid composting, I put as much material through my " screen as I can. It produces a very fine, fluffy product, completely unrecognizable from what was fed to the machine. Our machines have a single flywheel-mounted chipping blade and 24 free-swinging hammers in a hammermill section. The hammers keep bashing the material until it is small enough to escape through the holes in whatever screen is mounted. Because the hammers don't depend on a blade cutting action, the hammermill is a very versatile shredding machine. You can even feed material like oyster shells, acorns, or even clay pots -- things you would never think of trying to cut with a blade. Your fibrous Mugwort might give a wrapping problem if you feed it directly to the shredding chute. I had a bunch of wild grapevines (they were 20 to 30 feet long) to feed my MacKissic, and at first I started feeding them into the shredder chute. Parts of the vines started wrapping around the hammermill rotor, severely slowing the rate at which they were shredded. So I stopped feeding them to the shredder chute and then tried feeding the vines, one at a time, into the chipper chute. The vines went in rapidly and the chipper knife cut the vines into short sections which fell into the hammermill section where they were rapidly pulverized through the ¼" holes of my screen. The resulting product was soft and fluffy enough to fill a pillow with. Totally unrecognizable as having come from wild grapevines. It made a great addition to a compost pile. If your Mugwort is fibrous enough to "wrap" the hammermill rotor (like my wild grapevines did), I would simply feed the Mugwort in through the chipper chute. I am not familiar with Mugwort, so I don't know the best technique to shred it. But if you have a lot of it, you should be able to produce a lot of fine-textured compost from it. If you have some existing old Mugwort piles, you can also put them through the hammermill (but wear a face mask to avoid breathing mold spores). In fact, I would probably toss in a little of the old rotted Mugwort while the new Mugwort was being shredded. That would "marry" the two materials together and effectively "seed" your shredded Mugwort for rapid composting. Or you could toss a little rich soil or leafmold in with the fresh material to inoculate it with microorganisms for the compost pile. Soil or dirt doesn't hurt the hammermill. MM

I totally agree with you Kay. As I have so many different priorities (most of them I created) these days than I did when I was raising my daughter, I find the only way I can stay on top of everything is to break it down into sections. I have so much that must be done on a daily basis that it is sometimes difficult to get anything extra done. My days are pretty full especially if I have new plants coming in or puppies. I find with the garden and yard that if I break it down into one garden or area at a time, then I don't get behind. Big problem this year is that last year was a write off with my health so I have been playing catch up all year! My peonies got the bad end of the stick this year. Good thing they are established. :) And I just got 3 more daylilies today plus about 20 heucheras. Good thing I got a few garden helpers!

Isn`t it great when you neighbors house is blocked from your view ? ! For years we enjoyed a natural buffer around our home , only to be taken away in 04/05 We planted some areca palms.......... and now only see their roof top :) Still working on the pathways and more evergreen trees for shade :)