Your watering sounds perfect, but that sure looks like it's dry. Are you sure your sprinkler provides an inch in the dead looking area? There is a very nice looking circular shaped area on the upper left in your picture. Then it appears to look worse and worse as you get away from that central green area. If you are sure it is getting an inch right there, then the alternative is a fungus is cutting off the moisture either at the roots or up the stem of the grass. Usually a fungus grows in a circle shape; however, in your case everything but the dead area is a circle shape. I suppose it could still be a disease. My experience with zoysia is that once it turns brown it will remain brown until the following spring no matter what you do to it. It doesn't matter whether it turns brown in November or in May, it remains brown the rest of the season until spring whether you throw the kitchen sink at it or ignore it completely. If this is a fungus, your only approach is to use an organic product. Chemical fungicides are not supposed to be applied if the temps are going to get above 80 degrees F in the next 48 hours. In San Antonio the last day for applying that sort of chemical is sometime in March or April. The organic approach is to apply ordinary corn meal at a rate of 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. You can find it at your local feed store - or you can tell me what side of town you are on and I can direct you to a source nearby. But even if it is a fungus and you do kill it, I still don't have much hope for a green lawn this season. If you have the same variety of zoysia as your neighbor, then you should probably listen to him. If not, you either need to find someone who does or look for other options. One option is to change to a grass that can recover from simple goofs or natural disasters. That list includes all the other grasses plus, possibly, whatever zoysia variety your neighbor has.

Disregard any misspelled words. They are intentional to defeat the annoying "key word advertising" Garden Web recently started doing. ***"No headlight, no nothing...."*** Have you checked to see if the fuse has blown? What amp fuse did you use when you repaired the damaged wire (in other thread)? "Arcing" and "shorting" are 2 very different things. Example: If the reg/rect was loose on its mount, and it depended on the mounting screw to give it a proper ground, it would indeed arc at the screw.........but that would not be a "short" because the current would still be following its intended path. Look the wiring over real good. From what you describe about smoke coming from the screen over the flywheel, I would say something has caused, or created a really bad short that has somehow fed batterry voltage back to the stator windings, and that is not something easily done. I can only think of 2 events that might lead to this. (1) Installing the battery with reversed polarity, even if only long enough to try the starter before discovering the error. (2) Reversing polarity of the jumper cables when jump starting. The possibility here is that reverse polarity can blow a diode in the regulator completely out (open), or it might cause the diode to short and pass current from the battery to the stator wiring. If the stator wirning is back fed from the battery, it tries to become a heating element. Having the correct amp rated main fuse usually prevents this. You might as well study the manual real close because unless you find a lesser culprit outside the flywheel, you will be removing the flywheel soon. And you are also gonna have to trace out and inspect a bunch of chassis wirning too from what this is turning into. Now, once again, do you have a multi meter?

Patrice, her blood pressure may be too low and that may be why she was falling. There was one doctor when my mother was in the hospital that I thought was the only one that had any sense. He said that with someone my mother's age (86) he expects the top BP number to be higher than in younger people. 150 would be normal. With age, comes hardening of the arteries and it takes more pressure to pump the blood. You may want to get another opinion on your mother's BP numbers. http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2014/02/26/aggressive-blood-pressure-treatment-leads-to-falls-in-vulnerable-elderly-people/ "Older people treated aggressively for hypertension may be at higher risk for injuries from falling. Investigators tracked roughly 5,000 Medicare beneficiaries for three years. These senior citizens had high blood pressure. Most of them were taking medications to control hypertension. Those receiving multiple medications, as so many older people do, were at significantly higher risk for falls leading to hip fractures and head injuries. People who had fallen in the previous year were more than twice as likely to experience another serious injury if they were taking antihypertensive medications." This post was edited by Janelle12 on Fri, Oct 31, 14 at 19:12

Aloha! thanks for sharing your thoughts! As for the desk -- actually, it will not be used as a desk since our office desk area is right by the kitchen. It is just a breakfast bar type of area. But I wanted a lower countertop (30" vs the 36" height in the rest of the kitchen) in case some activities such as kneading call for it. A desk base cabinet allows for it without customization. I was also pleased to find out that the desk base is only ~21" deep, which will allow me to use 24" deep countertop (to be flush with the side panel of the tall cabinets) and still have a decent overhang. I'm planning to store dishes in those drawers. The void to the left of desk base is also not meant for sitting. It will hide the pet feeding zone, a stepping stool and my innovative towel rack (can you tell I'm excited about that idea?). Does any of those three layout options (of the tall cabinets) speak to you?