A commercial model would be the way to go. The big difference from a residential model to a commercial model is about 1500 to 2000 hours of service. Residential mowers are for part time home owner use. Commercial mowers are rated for hard work, 8 to 12 hours a day, 5 to 7 days a week. A typical residential mower is rated for 500 hours to 800 hours of life time service. A commercial mower is rated for 2000 to 3000 hours of life time service. I mow 5 acres of very rough land in Central Mississippi. I also have a fast growing grass type named Bahia Grass that loves hot dry or wet weather. To put it mildly Bahia Grass grows form 4 to 8 inches a week. I've owned 3 lawn tractors in the last 20 years. The first 2 were junk. In 1999 I got a Sabre by John Deere with a 46 inch deck, powered by a Briggs Vanguard. It did a pretty good job. But I couldn't mow the whole 5 acres. I had to hire a bush hogger to come in every year. Then if it rained a lot, my grass would get out of hand in a hurry. So my mowed yard got smaller, and smaller as the years went along. So I had to get a bush hog in more as the years went along. My mowed yard shrunk to about an acre. Than again a bush hogged field is not a pretty sight. My deck gave out last year on my Sabre. By that time my wife and I took on my mother in law's property due to the death of my father in law. Here we were in a wet year, with a broken mower. Things were getting in a bad way fast. I had to order a deck for an end of life mower. That took 2 week to come in. Then I had to paint the deck, and transfer all the hardware from the old deck to the new. That took about 2 more weeks. During that time we had to hire a bush hog, and a lawn care mower to knock the grass down on both properties. My wife and I started researching ztr mowers. Like you we didn't want to spend large amounts of money. We found that residential ztr mower had no longer life spand than our lawn tractor. Ether they had the same stamped deck and residential engines, along with the same hydro transaxles. Or if the mower had a fabricated deck, it still had a 500 hour rated engine. So 50 hours a year = 10 years. If we were going to spend that much on a mower, we wanted longer than 10 years. We looked, and looked, and researched, and looked, and researched. During that time the grass never stopped growing. I got the Sabre back into action. We got the mil's lawn back in to shape. But we lost the battle at our place. We made our decision. Funny someone mentioned our mower above. We got a 52 inch Bad Boy Pup with a 30 hp Kohler Command Pro. I've got to say that mower changed our life. What took us day to mow. We now can do it all in about 3 hours. And that's not traveling all that fast with a 52 inch deck. I'd say average speed is about 5 mph. We have trees, and rough grounds. I've rambled enough, so I'll show some pictures. Oh! I haven't found the ride to be that bad. Good Luck! ms

karyn1, yes, this is my guess, that it is roots raising out of the soil. I'm not certain why they would do this but I'm not going to bother them. I planted ten bare root pieces so there should still be plenty of roots underneath the soil. I'm hoping to see sprouts some day from at least one of the still buried roots. :-) I have read the ground must be quite warm before Maypop sprouts so will try to be patient. I have them planted in a long above ground planter and use a cover on them. During sunny days, I prop up or pull back the cover so the soil doesn't get too hot. I'm thinking this will work something like a cold frame. My initial worry was that the roots I received had no eyes or shoots showing. Apparently this is a common way to propagate this vine. I love this site as I learn so much from all of you! Mary

We have a similar problem and have no real foyer and certainly no mudroom (it's an old Cape Cod that was expanded but somehow managed to lose all its hallways.) The challenge for me is creating storage that is effective and attractive for 3 different types of items: coats, shoes, and backpacks. My oldest just started middle school and we learned the hard way that at this stage, backpacks cannot be hung from hooks on dry wall. Our solution is similar to yours: we have a long console table with a lower shelf. Shoes go in big old galvanized buckets from Smith & Hawken at Target; 2 kids' backpacks fit neatly next to the buckets. Kid hoodies/windbreakers are hung on hooks on a wall adjacent to the front door; there's also a hanging 3-file thingy for papers that need to go to/from school. We also have a small front closet that houses heavy coats and boots in winter and pool towels/goggles/etc in summer. It's not the best system, but it's reasonably functional at this point. I like the Ikea shoe cabinets, and toy with the idea of getting one every so often. But they are mostly too bulky for my space, and I'm not sure my kids would actually use them properly. We tried a bunch of other options for shoes and the basket/bucket thing seems to involve the least amount of effort so actually tends to get utilized more frequently. We also tried shoe benches etc, but found that no one ever sat down on the bench to put on their shoes!

Linelle - I don't eat fish (I have, but I prefer not to). I don't like to even wade in waters where they swim for fear of touching them. I have, at times, been so startled by an unexpected photo of a fish when turning the page in a magazine that I have actually thrown the magazine across the room - just an automatic response. I can't pinpoint the exact moment when this fear came on, but I was pretty small. I do remember being in a pet store when I was maybe four or five years old, and running my hand along a table full of sale items. My hand stopped on something that felt odd, and when I looked to see what it was, it was a dried-out, dead fish. Horrifying! I believe I started having fish dreams not too long after that. I'd wake up screaming in the night, certain that a fish was in the bed with me. My poor mom, being awakened at dark-thirty and having to quell the unreasonable fears of a very insistent little girl! When I was a tween, I used to like to go fishing with my grandfather when I visited my grandparents' lake house in the summer. He would bait the hook for me and take any fish I caught off the hook, and I thought it was great fun. I guess I wasn't horribly phobic at that time. One day he and I went fishing out in his boat. I caught 17 fish, and we took them home with us. My grandmother deemed them too small to fix for our dinner, so she decided to make a sort of stew out of them for the dog. She put them in a pressure cooker (I have no idea why), thinking they were all dead. Something happened and once the thing heated up, we heard hideous thrashing inside the pot. After awhile it stopped, but when she lifted the lid, there was a nasty film on top and a few eyeballs floating around. Again - horrifying stuff. The dog ate it up though. Once I told a boy in high school about my phobia, and shortly thereafter I opened my locker to find a huge dead fish inside. The boy thought that was just the funniest practical joke ever, and chased me up and down the halls holding it by the tail. I remember trying desperately to keep my cool and not show how agitated I was, but I fought not to burst into tears - or pass out. (I know this is getting to be way too long ...) A few years ago I decided that I wanted to overcome my phobia once and for all and actually sought counseling for it. I also tried to do a bit of immersion work on my own, and DH and I went to a local aquarium one afternoon. It's long been difficult for me to even get close to a fish, in any manner - even those behind glass. The salt water aquariums didn't bother me terribly; after all, those fish are often beautifully colored or comical looking. The freshwater tanks, however, caused me to panic. I forced myself to remain seated next to one that was built low to the ground with glass walls, with the various lake-living fish swimming right up to me on all sides and behind me. I couldn't do it. I sat there and just bawled and hyperventilated, and DH got me the hell out of there. Around that time we were traveling regularly to Mexico, and scuba diving was very popular where we stayed. In spite of my fish phobia, it sounded like a lot of fun, and I went so far as to take a few scuba lessons here, but did not go on to be certified. I didn't like the feeling of breathing underwater and couldn't get past a feeling of simmering panic. I know I wouldn't have made certification anyway - at least not with the instructor I had - as his group went to a local man-made lake to receive their certification, and the waters were often murky and always filled with curious fish. Pretty sure that seeing something like this would have induced dangerous panic in me! Gosh, I am sorry to have told you more than you ever wanted to know. I've not been asked about this in a long time, and I guess my memories just came flooding back!