Uh oh. You made a crucial error in prepping for a bermuda lawn. You rototilled it to 6 inches. Rototilling is the first step in obtaining a seriously bumpy lawn. Why? Because it is not humanly possible to hold the rototiller to 6 inches. In some places it is 5 inches. In other places it might be 8 inches. In all cases the depth of the fluffy soil is not going to be just 6 inches. In three years, when all that fluffy soil settles, you will be left with bumps reflecting the different depths that the rototiller reached. Then you will have to level the soil. You can level it along the way but that will just raise your soil level each time. If you can stand to mow the grass taller than a scalping level (maybe 2-3 inches) for three years, then you can come in and do a one-time leveling and make it right. For your current ruts, fill them with sand. Do not cover the entire lawn with sand - just do the ruts and holes. The bermuda will fill over them. When Auteck says to wait until the soil temps are above 70 degrees, that does not happen until the night time low temps are in the 70s. He's talking about late May at the earliest. Bermuda is best seeded when it is blisteringly hot outside. Please don't be 'that guy' next April who seeded in March and is wondering why all he sees is crabgrass and no bermuda.

I am just about as lame as one can get on this but here are a couple of suggestions. I'll assume that you've taken a digital photograph and stored it in your computer. You'll then need to open an account with photobucket.com or some other photo hosting service. If you don't want to bother, you can just do a one-time deal thru tinypic.com. That outfit is owned by photobucket, anyway. Click the "browse" button and find your picture in the computer. Pick a size - I like 320 x 240 so it doesn't take too long for the folks here to open the thread. Click "upload." After, your picture is in tinypic - copy the "HTML for Websites" code. Paste it here in the Rocky Mountain Gardening "Message" box and click "preview message" to see how everything turned out. Then, let us see the baby!! Here is a link that might be useful: Tinypic

(I posted this on another forum as well. So many have this issue!) Daddies instinctively protect daughters. Never make them choose between you and the daughters. The only way to, IMHO, to solve this is to convince the dad that forcing the daughter to be self-sufficient is BEST FOR HER, and this is easy to do if you read up on enabling behavior, teaching self-sufficiency, etc. Summary is that he is HARMING her by NOT teaching her budgeting, self-sufficiency, and the joy of building a comfortable life step by step. Children are raised in a family such that by the time they are 18 it is typically more safe and comfortable than if they go out on their own. They have to "step down" in living standards when they start out on their own, and build their own life in order to be comfortable. This natural way to build a life is stripped away by enabling parents who have seen to their children's needs and feel their children should continue at that lifestyle level instead of starting out on their own at a lower level. Remind Dad of his own struggle to become successfully/financially independent, and that he is robbing daughter of this same life journey and the character it builds. The daughter doesn't know anything different, this is what she has been made to expect, so this is, sadly, really ALL the Dad's fault. If the Dad isn't convinced this is the way things should evolve for daughter FOR HER OWN GOOD, then separate your finances, budget for your future including retirement, and require Dad pay his half of your joint expenses. If he can't pay it due to support for daughter, then he is bumming off of you, and you have some hard choices of your own enabling behaviour. Finally, I suggest strongly that the daughter is not just dumped. A timeline needs to be created, maybe 3 years, with firm milestones on becoming self-sufficient, including training for a career. The milestones need to be met every 6 months such as attending training classes, filling out job applications (if needed) x times PER DAY, with consequences spelled out in writing and carried through. Buy Quicken or similar product for daughter to learn about budgeting. I advise NOT being the career adviser, but pointing daughter to state/federal resources and career counselling to teach her how to get help on her own, although funding career counselling may be wise. Read up on tough love and remember that young people's expectations are set by the parent. They don't know any better than what they've been led to believe. Good luck. You only live once.

The painting was finished yesterday. Thankfully, it turned out so beautifully that my husband didn't cry too long when he got the bill. My painter couldn't help letting him know that the Benjamin Moore Aura paint I chose was the most expensive he had ever worked with. I had several minor issues with the painting team but nothing that I didn't get corrected and worked out. The big surprise was that the Benjamin Moore store mixed my paint wrong twice! That's right, the people that pride themselves on their color mixed one gallon of Edgecomb gray minus one of the colors and gave me a yellowy cat puke color. Of course because of the "north-facing-shadow" challenges, he didn't notice it until he had painted ¼ of the crown molding in one room and touched up baseboards in another. The second mistake was putting enough tint for a gallon can in a quart sized can of Revere Pewter. Now that mistake worked out well, because there seemed barely any difference between the Edgecomb Gray and the Revere Pewter except the RP looking muddy... so the darker quart actually worked better; and I put that color in the back of my book case. Otherwise EVERYTHING was painted the EG. I am still waiting for the enamel to cure so nothing can get put away yet. I'll post before and after pics once everything is back in place. And yes, I'm taking all the advice and editing and decluttering as much as I can. Thanks again everyone for all the very helpful advice.