Sorry Newhomeowner ! I think we all got kinda Side Tracked lol . As for your information Request ! Well I'm, pretty Well a Farmer as far as lawns go ! If I had my way I would just Cut and Bale . Anyway I think Roadbike did more than a adequate job on the Quality Assurance of Cut and Design Aspects (way over my head) but very Concise RB ! On the more Serious Side you can't go wrong as far as Manufacturers are concerned with Honda , Snapper , Toro , Lawn-Boy , Cub-Cadet . All are High Quality Units. Then you have White , Mtd , Poulan , Husqvarna , etc or Sears , K-Mart , Costco , Wal-Mart , Home Depot , Canadian Tire (Box Store Series) . Personally I like the walk behind Models (Small Acreage) Mulching Models (Hate Raking) Options on Self Propelled are Front Wheel Drive Vs Rear Wheel , I can only attest to front Wheel that I have owned (Lawn-boy and Sears) were ok just lift the front when you wished , did not have to hit the Selector Knob to disable the Self Propelled Mode. I realize that there are down sides to Front Wheel Drive also . As far as Riding Units I will leave that to Individuals with far greater experience and working knowledge , but due to their substantial cost , would suggest you do your homework (test rides , demonstrations) hands on to ensure you get what you need and not what the Salesman wanted to Sell You Dude ... T . P.S. I'am out off here have at it Bro's :)

Bre, The only way to get into the club is via hard work, pain, misery, total dejection, mind-numbingly repetitive chores like digging out Johnson grass and bermuda grass, etc. You can't just dip your finger in green paint and join the Green Thumb Club. You have to earn it, woman, earn it! (giggle) About the time the garden has driven you to either drinking, overindulging in chocolate (as a painkiller, of course) or tears, you'l l have earned your way into the club. You could be there right now. In return, you will experience glorious moments of joy, peace and happiness when your faith in a tiny seed is repaid in spades, or at least in oodles of fresh produce, the incredible fragrance of delightful flowers, and even the sight of tiny dew drops resting on a delicate flower petal. One day, and probably sooner than you think, you will grumpily find yourself standing in the kitchen surrounded by mounds of produce you cannot possibly deal with in the time available to you, and you'll realize that something went bizarrely wrong and somehow you got a great harvest....even the OK winds, thunderstorms, hail, tornadoes, high winds, neighbor's dogs, gophers, grasshoppers, cottontail rabbits, deer and flash floods pouring through your garden did not deny you your harvest. As you wearily try to decide "what am I going to do with all this stuff?", a smile will dance across your face because you'll know right then that you truly belong to the club and you earned your membership in the club. And, by the way, everyone who tries, who pours their heart and soul and very being into creating their garden is an automatic member of the club from the first day they start, even if they feel like it is a club that they don't yet belong to. This is a club where we all earn our membership in the club each and every day. As for the mushrooms, try to view them as a positive thing. To get mushrooms, you need soil with some good biological activity occurring in it, so congratulate yourself on that. When the soil has adequate organic matter and you have enough moisture and sometimes excess fertility or not enough wind flow, mushrooms just happen. Gardens with soil low in organic matter don't grow mushrooms as often as those with adequate organic matter. Remember that the first time you encounter slime mold (google it!) in your garden. Sometimes Ma Nature just sends us all kinds of surprises. I never get hail when I expect it. Baseball sized hail will not fall when you are at home and have covered up all your plants with every available bucket, trash can, deer netting, cardboard boxes, quilts etc. Baseball sized hail will fall when you head off to the store or the park or out of town with a "nothing will happen here" attitude in your head and leave the garden naked and exposed to the elements. For what it is worth, we've lived here 15 years and had hail in our forecast about 3,000 times and only once have we had severe damage. Even then, since it occurred in May, all the plants regrew from the ground and produced. They produced late, but they still produced. (Well, corn won't, but most everything else will.) Last year we had hail 11 times, but never larger than nickles and damage was minimal. I wish I had a nickle for every day I worried endlessly about big hail that never came. My dad's garden was destroyed once by baseball to softball sized hail when I was about 19 or 20 years old, and he never said a word about it, but that likely was because he was too busy getting the house and cars fixed. If your place ever gets hit by baseball-sized hail, I can guarantee you that your garden won't even rate high on the list of things you have to think about and deal with. Luvabasil, I hate gophers. Usually the cats keep them under control, but sometimes they cannot because the gophers (and voles, which we have here more so than gophers) are more active at night when the cats are inside for their own safety since our property is full of predators that prowl at night. I've had good luck spraying the garden with a mole/gopher repellent that contains castor oil. It coats everything in the soil and makes the plant roots and soil-borne insects unpalatable to the rodents that like them. We only had moles the first year, and the cats wiped them out, but the voles and gophers try to move back into the garden every year and the cats and I have to work at removing them for a while. Both of y'all already belong to the club, by the way, or you wouldn't be posting on this forum. Dawn

All of this has been interesting to read and to help me put things in perspective. I also, have had many moments where I have hated my 95 year old Craftsman home. I purchased it about 1-1/2 years ago but was not able to actually move into it for several months, as the person who lived in it prior for 30 years had let it fall into quite a state of neglect. Even when we finally moved in - I had no running water in my kitchen for many weeks. I, having been working in the field of architecture for the same amount of time, saw beyond it's sad state to the good bones it has. Did all the right things; got my inspections, had the advice of good people including my old bosses on board to help with renovations. Even my main contractor was a friend from that job (I'm actually in administration in that field but have learned quite a bit about design and building practices second hand from being around them for so long). However, even with all that knowledge behind me, and even with paying a very good price for the home, I found myself spending more than twice I expected on renovations and I'm still nowhere near done. There were times were I would come home and literally cry myself to sleep in a panic of how I was ever going to pay for everything which needed to be repaired that we didn't anticipate; things that were hidden from the inspection like the near re-enactment of the bathtub scene from "The Money Pit" where it comes crashing through the floor through the ceiling below (mine, had we not had to take down the kitchen ceiling, and discovered the tub was being held in place by "tinker toys" more or less, certainly would have fell through at some point if we had filled it with water). I've spent $22,000 on new electrical and lighting and other miscellaneous repairs after the fact. $10,000 on plumbing. $15,000 for 27 new windows. I don't even know what my kitchen cost me because you have to figure in some of the costs above into it; so what? $40,000? (the kitchen was a disaster area and it had to be completely gutted). I had a jungle of weeds and ivy, cracked concrete and crap as a garden and the City was mandating I remove it (I have a TCO on the house and much of what I am doing I literally have to do to clear the TCO), landscaping cost me over $12,000 (I did put in a new paver patio, glad I did). My chimney/fireplace needs repairs - it's unsafe, that's costing $6000. I need regrading of my side yard and drainage underground - $5200. About to paint the house, another $5200 (house is stucco). New gutters $2200, Added central a/c $8000 (did get a rebate back on that). Oh and contractor payments $20,000. There's more, another $40,000 that have added up of miscellaneous stuff; emergency repairs, things necessary for the home, etc. I still don't have furniture for my guest bedroom. The interior needs painting badly. My main bathroom is falling apart - every day another tile comes off the wall. The attic needs better insulation. I have no backsplash in the kitchen yet. I have unfinished carpentry items around the house. My floors need refinishing. I 5 doors which need replacement. Water issues in the basement (contractor is pretty sure the new gutters will take care of it for the most part). I need window treatments everywhere (currently have very cheap stuff up but at least it's something). There's other furniture I need here and there. My closets could use systems in them - they were built with minimal shelving. On and on and on. And yet when people see and walk into my home, they are mesmerized. The LOVE it. Compliment me on how far it's come since I purchased it. Love it's uniqueness (well I do too - it seems to be a cross between a Craftsman and Victorian and it's made from terra cotta brick which is unusual in my area). But when I look at it, I'm depressed. It still looks dismal. All I see are all the repairs still to be done and the fact that my money isn't holding up (although since my mortgage wasn't huge to begin with, I just did a re-finance already, and took hopefully enough out to do nearly everything left to finish up - other than the bathroom, which I'll have about half of what I need). I just feel like at 52 years old, I'll be dead before I see this house done. And it isn't like I have kids to leave it to either. It truly does feel like a money pit to me. My partner and I have like no money to enjoy ourselves (he had been out of work for over 2 years, and JUST finally went back to work). I'm the one who owns the house, so every penny goes back into the house now. The only good thing, is that I have a very stable job and I feel that I can keep looking forward to increased salary over time, so hopefully I'll be able to keep up with the repairs. But oh my, like everyone else, it feels so daunting and overwhelming most of the time. I thought about bailing out several times and taking the (huge) loss - I still do - but I love the house too much to throw in the towel yet. Probably not ever. It's a curse, and a blessing. We're happy here, very happy.

This is an old thread but I guess I will reply to it. I'm having the same issue with my male ragdoll cat, 11yrs old. All of a sudden he stopped eating and drinking but also kept licking his lips occasionally. I also noticed him being sick quite a bit (yellow liquid with froth) He usually loves lic e lix treats which is yogurt consistency and usually licks it up within seconds but would not have that either. Took him to the vet yesterday, I said I thought it might be a hairball stuck or something but the Nurse felt around the tummy slowly going along and said she can't feel a blockage. Temperature was ok and told me might have picked up a bug although he never gets outside. She gave him an injection and told me if he didn't eat or drink by the morning then to ring up may need bloods doing. Next morning (today) still not eaten or drank water so they told me to bring him in for blood tests. They phoned me about an hour ago saying the tests were pretty boring really, they all came back ok. He has been on a drip for today and told me he can go home today with the canula in his leg and if he eats nothing today again he goes back on drip for another day tomorrow. So this is where I am at with my cat right now, have to pick him up in an hour. I am hoping he eats and he won't have to go back in to stay tomorrow. I just thought I'd write this because others seem to have the same issues. It doesn't help you feel better though when you search the web thinking it could be the worst.