8 inches??? That would cost about $6k for the dirt alone. My pockets are not that deep. I was hoping I could get by with about $3k for dirt, delivery and leveling. Tilling isn't feasible for the same reason aerating is not. The rocks would be unbelievable and breaking the tiller would probably result. Exactly what does the annual rye do for the dirt before installing sod? Do you then topsoil after the rye dies? To what depth? Bermuda is the norm in my area and zoysia is the exception. I read that zoysia is prone to disease in my region. Can anyone verify this for me? I love love SA, we had it at our previous home. I drive by our old house occasionally and miss that lush green carpet! However, it requires far too much water and is prone to disease. We have a section in our backyard (about 3,000sf just around the perimeter of the house) that is Celebrity Bermuda. I'm not impressed with it at all. When it's tall, it's green and after mowing it's completely brown, even with the mower set on the highest setting. All my neighbors have Tifway 419 and their yards stay green after mowing and they mow once per week. Thanks everyone!

Man made global warming or the manmade myth of gullible alarming? This one is too easy folks. Just watch Joe Bastardi's weekly weather summary. If you care to disagree then you probably have an agenda. If you grow citrus in the ground outside zone10, Joe is a good watch anyhow. Roger Revelle was one of the first to advance the theory of CO2 as greenhouse gas causing a coming warming. He was at Harvard and attracted the leftist liberal crowd that realized they could use this to defeat capitalism. Here in Texas we call them watermelons since they are only green on the outside and all red inside. Algore became his most vocal proponent. Revelle went to the lab and did some experiments. He predicted huge temperature rises and climate change due to really high CO2 levels. It never happened. The models they developed still have not matched real world CO2 levels. Nor has the temperature gone up like Revelle originally predicted. Revelle was not a kook. He realized he made a mistake and recanted the whole global warming myth before he died. He even apologized for "any harm he had done". Not so the rest of the warming hucksters. They parlayed this into a multi-billion dollar industry with trillions of more tax dollars planned in a global redistribution scam. Before you get all upset, here are some more facts. After Revelle came up with his half baked theory, they ignored these key items. Nobody had any data on the amount of solar radiation we receive from the sun. And the planet Mars was heating up same as earth. So called climate scientists claimed it was not the sun. They decried skeptics as "junk science" and even "flat earth people". If you have analyzed as many samples of acid gases, CO2 and others scrubbed by sea water, as I have you would also know how wacky this whole idea is.

I'm curious to see what the extension office may have to say also. Ours here also has a very good plant library with disease indentification keys and what not. You could also try and send a leaf to your state ag. head honcho for his opinion. I went thru something simular with a new pest in our area last fall...I contacted the state Chief entomologist and arranged to send him specimens, which I did, and it was indentified for free PLUS he had my specimens donated (with my name)to the WA State collection for display :D Before I sent them they had NO knowledge this pest was in Eastern WA!! If it does turn out to be CMV perhaps you could prevent it from getting spread in your area and then notify the source of the seed so they can get a handle on it as well. Please let us know. Vera

As a 9 year old kid in Elk City, OK in 1950, I met Tim Holt, Fuzzy Knight & Randolph Scott who were some of my favorite cowboy movie stars that made personal appearances at a local movie theatre. And, during our town's 50th. anniversary in 1951 I met & shook hands with Jess Willard who had been the Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World, 1915-1919. He lived in my hometown during the early days & helped lay the bricks that paved Broadway St. and are still there and "in use" now in 2006! Moving ahead several years and after I had moved to PA...my wife & I saw Richard M. Nixon as he arrived by helicopter and dined at the then-famous Bookbinder's Restaurant in Philadelphia one evening while we were eating dinner there also. Then later, during the mid-1970's, we saw "The Duke" John Wayne in New York City getting out of his limousine and greeting the gathering crowd at Rockefeller Center. Guess that's about it... LarryD