I can put whatever grass back there is appropriate. Not married to Bermuda but the majority of yards do around here. Previously it was a 6 foot fence with a tree. Now it is an 8 foot fence and no tree. The direction the Sun travels from the picture is back to front. The shade from our house is there from morning till noon and is unchanged from the project. The shade from those houses behind us is cast before the fence. Neither of these things prevented the Bermuda from growing before. Around the tree canopy shade area yes. Was starting to see some effects but now it's gone. :) The goal of the project was to raise the area and remove the tree. Basically we are doubling the size of our backyard in terms of usable (for kids) space. Other goal is to not create a drainage problem. Before it was excellent drainage but obviously by raising it, we must be mindful not to create a problem. For instance, I have put in drain pipe for all of the gutter feeds to that area and daylighted that directly out the wall. Before it was on the plane of the yard. Not ideal green thinking wise but it's done. Now that area only takes on water from the plane of the yard surface itself. I do have a drainage question related to grading which I'll post on the landscape forum. Is there another grass that I should be using back there? It's not out of the question for me to have something completely different since the entire area save for about 5 feet, is surrounded by hardscapes (driveway, wall, patio, house). I'm open to any suggestion.

Thank you, ToxCrusadr! Your reminder of the fact that DG are solid, unchanged particles rather than the porous end product of expanded shale gave me my "DUH/I'm a moron" moment. Regarding expanded shale research: I enjoyed a brief (grant-sponsored, part-time) employment at the Tex A&M Urban Solutions Center in Dallas a few recent years ago. I was very fortunate to spend a brief time involved in soil sciences. However, my experience with this discipline was limited to soil fertility. Having said that, I feel that some of their non-fertility amendment based research (corporation funded grants) and subsequent results are often an effort in ridiculous predictability. My own extreme and annoyingly sarcastic example would be "would an ice cube retain its crystalline structure in an oven or a freezer". Therefore, I hope that the general gardener would not decide to attempt a successful garden using expanded shale alone. My understanding of the affects of various amendments to soil structure is limited to classroom lecture, persistent questions and personal experimentation. I am truly grateful for the chance to get advice from many varied angles.

A very unfortunate title, but I'd recommend Gardening for Dummies, another in the series of "Dummies" books that are truly great basic resources for whatever topics they address and are ideal for the novice to the subject. There are some very basic principles you should become familiar with right off the bat - soils, watering and light conditions. If one or more of these is not correct for the plants in question, failure and plant death can be swift :-( Soils in most new home construction (and in many existing lots as well) will be sorely deficient - either lacking in necessary plant nutrients, rocky, poorly draining or of heavy clay. In Texas, my bet is on mostly clay as caliche soils are very common there. Adding organic matter in the form of compost (your own or bagged) will hit several birds with one stone - it will loosen and lighten clay soils, it adds necessary nutrients and it improves drainage. Add 4-6 inches (more won't hurt) and work into the existing soil as deep as you can manage. Watering new plants and those in hot climates is going to need to be a regular, perhaps even daily in summer, occurrence. Mulch will help but it won't substitute for regular deep watering. Avoid just lightly sprinkling or teasing the plants with water - water deeply so that it soaks well down into the root zone. More plants die from improper watering practices than for any other reason. And finally make sure you are selecting plants that are suitable for that light exposure - sun loving plants in sun and shade loving plants in shade. Plants grown in full sun will often require more frequent watering than those grown in shade as water tends to evaporate faster in areas exposed to intense sunlight. The mulch will slow this process down. And if an organic mulch like compost or bark, it does not have to be removed before planting - just rake it aside and plant or work it into the soil. 4-6 inches is a bit deep and can smother plants if piled too closely around them. I'd go with about half that much - 2-3 inches of any good, readily available organic mulch.

Steaming means that when you hit their burning skin/hair with water to put out the fire, the water turns to steam and burns them more. It is the reason you won't see a firefighter spraying water on a burning animal to put out the fire, and it is tough to see. That's why I turn away--I cannot bear to watch it. The first time I saw animals on fire (armadilloes and possums), I begged the firefighters to spray water on them to put them out, and they said "Can't do it. It will kill them." I think they probably died anyway though. There is nothing near me. Are you kidding? Even a trip into Marietta takes 30 minutes round trip and that's just if you're popping into a gas station convenience store for a cold drink. Other than whatever is in Marietta (which in terms of shopping is not much), we have to drive 30 miles north or south to reach any decent shopping destination,and by decent I mean something like Wal-Mart. That sounds like a long way, but when we first moved here we had to drive 50-60 miles to get to a Lowe's or Home Depot. We also had NO cell service within 2 or 3 miles of our house, and no internet service. We had to buy a DirectPC satellite dish to have the internet. Our then-15-year-old son thought we had moved to a foreign planet. Eventually cell phone service moved closer to us. At one point we had cell service if standing down in the road 300' from the house, then eventually we had cell service in the living room of the house but no farther, and then finally anywhere in the house, but not north or west of the house. Now we have cell service everywhere on our property. See how we're moving on up to the big time? Eventually we had dial-up internet but it was painfully slow after having had DirctPC. However, it only cost maybe 1/3rd as much. Now we have (hallelujah!) wireless internet. You still lose all cell service when you get pretty far out west in our county, although a new cell tower was supposed to solve that. I haven't been out west since it went up, but someone who has been out that way said it was not the solution they said it would be. Once you get far west in our county, even the fire/police radio reception can be spotty, and I don't like that. Don't get me wrong. When we moved here we knew it was very rural and very remote, but the lack of cell service and internet service was a little surprising. Because we're in a lowlying area, Channel 12 was the only tv channel, period, that we could pick up and that was spotty and with a big antenna. So, we got DirecTV and still have it. Sometimes you have to give up some modern conveniences in order to live way out in the sticks. I am grateful every day for internet shopping and UPS. It is so much easier to order stuff and have it delivered than to drive 90 or 100 miles one way looking for it. The nearest Baskin-Robbins I can think of, by the way, is in Denton, TX, and I am not even sure if it is still there. There's a Braum's in both Ardmore and Gainesville but both are sort of off the beaten path and we rarely go there. During the dry months we leave Love County as little as possible because there's nothing worse than being 30 miles from home when the fire pager goes off. It makes Tim crazy and it is hard to get him to patiently wait while I finish the grocery shopping, for example, before we head back home. The fire either will still be burning when he gets there, or it won't, is my attitude. A couple of years ago we were in Lewisville shopping for a new treadmill and started getting phone calls and text messages urging us to hurry home because there was a big wildfire. We did. By the time we reached Denton, TX, we could see the smoke plume from the fire in western Love County, but we kept thinking it must be from a closer fire in Cooke or Montague County. We probably were already between Sanger and Gainesville before we realized that the smoke plume we'd been seeing since we were east of Denton was from our fire. That was a fire that took several days and all the departments in our county to extinguish it fully. In the summer or winter fire season, any time we leave home, we have a 'to do' list and hurry, hurry, hurry to do it and get back home. To me, it is a thrill to get to spend 4 hours in Denton without rushing back, but that only happens a couple of times a year. We'll eat lunch at a real restaurant, walk around the mall, maybe browse the bookstore. It is like a vacation, albeit a brief one. I am not complaining, either. One day of dealing with traffic and crowds in the D-FW metroplex and I'm ready to stay home for the next month. I love living in the country for many reasons, but shopping convenience is not one of them. Dawn