I water quit frequently every morning and evening for a good hour in my front and back yard. You may need to tune up your watering. At least you are doing it deep. Here are what I call the 1-2-3 elements of good lawn care. I've come to these elements after reading thousands of posts here and elsewhere on the Internet. Water deeply and infrequently. Deeply means at least an hour in every zone, all at once. Infrequently means monthly during the cool months and no more than weekly during the hottest part of summer. If your grass looks dry before the month/week is up, water longer next time. Deep watering grows deep, drought resistant roots. Infrequent watering allows the top layer of soil to dry completely which kills off many shallow rooted weeds. Mulch mow at the highest setting on your mower. Most grasses are the most dense when mowed tall. Bermuda, centipede, and bent grasses are the most dense when mowed at the lowest setting on your mower. Dense grass shades out weeds and uses less water when tall. Dense grass feeds the deep roots you're developing in 1 above. Fertilize regularly. I fertilize 4 times per year using organic fertilizer. Which fertilizer you use is much less important than numbers 1 and 2 above. Still less important, in my opinion, is the use of molasses. Get the grass to thrive by doing these three things right. Then you can try out some of the more exotic aspects of organic lawn care. Have you read the Organic Lawn Care FAQ? You can find it in almost any organic forum...except this one. Nobody knows who the moderator is here, so it shows up in the GW Organic Gardening forum as well as in many other forums on the web.

Melony, Ask away and no one is counting how many questions per thread. The only reason to post a separate thread on different topics would be to ensure that the GardenWeb search function could find them later. With molasses, I use it on an as-needed basis when adding organic matter or fertilizers to garden areas. Sometimes I put it on the compost pile where it works as a great compost activator by stimulating biological activity. There's really no rule about when to use. I just add it when I think an area needs a little more soil improvement. With drip irrigation, I use T-tape from DripWorks that has emitters/slits every 8", but my soil is heavier than Jay's. Even my sandy/silty soil has had some clay added to it in the veggie garden in an effort to make it hold water longer. In a new gardening area with very sandy soil which has not been improved very much yet, keeping it well-watered this year was difficult, so next year I'll run more drip lines through that area in an effort to keep it moist. I also hope to amend that soil quite a bit during the gardening off-season. I use soaker hoses for some things and most of mine last several years. I like to put them underneath the mulch because that protects them from the sun's UV rays to some degree. Really though, as time goes by, I'm switching more and more to drip irrigation than soaker hoses. They don't make soaker hoses as well as they used to and they do not seem to last long here. However, we have some soaker hoses that are 13 years old and completely encircle the house's foundation area. They stay there year-round and we use them to keep the clay soil around the foundation moist so it won't crack and cause the foundation to crack. Because we have a Victoria style house with wraparound raised porches, most of the soaker hoses are underneath the porches and are not exposed to direct sunlight which may be prolonging their lives. Either that or they are the best soaker hoses every made. I lift up the drip tape lines from the garden and let them dry out at the end of the season, then roll them up and store them in a big Rubbermaid tote indoors over the winter where they are not subjected to freezing temperatures. That prolongs their life somewhat. I've also used the black distribution lines where you punch holes where desired to insert emitters, drippers or sprayers at the intervals you choose in order to customize the spacing to suit your plantings. They work just fine, but if you rotate crops every year, you have to remember to rotate the driplines too with the correct spacing for the crop spacing. If you use customized lines with emitters at different spacing for each crop, you don't want to turn on your system and discover the bean beds have the driplines with tomato plant spacing and vice versa. Like Jay, I mix and match watering systems as needed. The way I do things in a very dry year is different from a very wet year or even an average year. I just try to go with the flow and alter things if I am not happy with how the system is working. Sometimes I'll even turn on the sprinkler and water with it for a while during a prolonged period of very hot weather just because the plants look so dry and dusty. Dawn

Here is my all time favorite chewy molasses cookie, for comparison. Yours has almost the same amount of fat, although my recipe has twice as much flour/sugar/eggs, etc. I think the fat ratio is definitely pretty high in your recipe. Chewy Molasses Cookies (Annie CF) 1 1/2 cups of shortening (I use half and half with butter, but all butter makes them too crispy for my taste) 1 cups granulated sugar 1 cup dark brown sugar 2 eggs 3/4 cup of dark molasses 4 1/2 cups flour 1 teaspoon salt 4 teaspoons baking soda 2 teaspoons cinnamon 2 teaspoons ginger 1 teaspoon ground cloves Chopped crystalized ginger, optional, to taste. I used about half a cup, finely chopped and wish I'd have used more but I love ginger Coarse sugar or turbinado sugar for rolling Cream the shortening and sugars. Add the molasses and eggs and mix until well blended. Sift the flour (yeah right, I don't, LOL) and measure 4 1/2 cups into a separate bowl. Add the spices, salt, and baking soda and whisk to combine. Turn the mixer to low or stir, and add the flour slowly until well mixed. Stir in the chopped ginger and chill the dough for at least an hour. After the dough has chilled for an hour, roll tablespoonfuls of the dough into balls and roll the balls in the coarse sugar to completely coat. Place the dough balls about an inch apart on a greased or parchment-lined cookie sheet and bake for 12 to 15 minutes in a 350 degree oven. The cookies will puff up and crack. When the cookies are done the cracks should still look a little wet, but the outside should look dry. They'll "fall" a little as they cool, let them sit a couple of minutes on the sheet before you try to move them to cooling racks. Annie

Oh dear. Details :) It's been over three years since we did them--I honestly don't remember exactly what kind of concrete we used. I know it wasn't anything terribly fancy. We had a local concrete supply store, and the dye was just their version of "black." It was scooped out of a barrel and presented in a paper lunch bag. I think the whole kitchen came out to about $700, but I don't know the sf of counter space (we don't live there now). You could guesstimate from the pictures. It took a while. Probably 10 total hours for the forms, and maybe 5 hours for the pours. We mixed by hand. One thing we did that I wish we hadn't was make the concrete for the main stretch too stiff. It may be stronger that way, but the island, which we made wetter, came out better--less holes to backfill, and an overall smoother surface. I believe it had to cure for a week or 10 days, then we did the buffing, which took probably 15 hours total for all of it. We did not grind it to expose aggregate, which would have increased the labor quite a bit. I liked the uniform, stone-like look. Something we did differently than Cheng recommends was to use that concrete mesh stuff instead of creating a rebar form. Much easier. We did put some rebar in the island because of the overhang, and ended up regretting that when it made a shadow in the finished top. If you decide to go with rebar, get it as close to the bottom of your finished counters as possible. What else...they were heavy, but not so heavy that 4 people couldn't handle the island. They never cracked while we were there. We used the wax and sealer that Cheng sells, and were very happy with it. It was enough that it seemed like it would last years. They needed to be re-waxed every couple of months, which took maybe 20 minutes. You might want to look at this "instructables" page: http://www.instructables.com/id/Concrete-Countertops-for-the-Kitchen---Solid-Surfa/ Good luck, and you're welcome to e-mail me if you'd like.