Hi D1, I think you photo shopped your lawn to make it look that green. That's what I'm thinkin'. Your lawn looks great! I am posting an image showing the dimensions I need. Unfortunately the images get washed out during the upload. Looking at the back of your house starting from the right side these are the dimensions I need. A. From the right side of the house/foundation to the right edge of the slab. B. The width of the slab. C. The dimension from the left edge of the slab to the left side of the house/foundation D. From the right edge of the slab to the right edge of the door. E. The width of the door measured from the edge where "D" ends and "F" begins. F. From the left edge of the door to the left edge of the slab. G. From the house to the edge of the slab near the pines. H. From the house to the property line. A, C, and H. can be close (within and inch or two, "H" can be a foot or two) but the others should be exact or at least within 1/4". The photos show there is daylight available at the sides of the property and some locations to put a rain garden. If you can get me those dimensions I can draw the structure. The little red "dots" in the image below are camera locations. The ones on the corners of the slab should be taken with the camera sitting on the slab looking towards the the lawn just catching the corner of the house so I can use the siding to measure . I was showing 3 others on the left side from about 50'± away. Hopefully your neighbor wouldn't mind if you took a few shots from their yard. Do not use any tele or wide angle setting when taking the pictures as they distort the edges too much. Keep the camera as low and level as possible or a slight tilt up if any. Distance is key. The more area you can fit into a single shot without a wide-angle setting the better. I think the least expensive solution is going to be flashing the entire wall although you may be able to find someone who will come in and cut the sod and remove some top soil for free. So glad you posted some close-ups of the stair as in the other photos it appeared to be on the ground, which it is not, and the sheathing is exposed to the elements with only a thin coat of paint protecting it. Did you like the stair idea I posted above? I am going to specify cedar and Philippine "mahogany" so that it is easier to paint if you choose (just the cedar). Pressure treated lumber will warp split and check like crazy in that location. Guessing from the dual leaders on the corners of the house I am assuming you have a hip roof and not gable ends so I am going to call out gutter drains in those corners sending them to daylight behind the pines. Because lawn drainage is not a major concern in those locations you can use the corrugated pipe already going across the lawn and the same or a rigid pipe on the other side. I will be in and out all day today and tomorrow but will have time to get this done on Tuesday if you can get me the dimensions I need. The photos would be nice but are less important although a good shot showing both sides of the pines (in the same picture, distant) and where your property line ends back there would be a great help. Thanks, Jey

Right now, I need a sump pump...and I live on a hill. More rain in the forecast, too. The weather pattern has changed here - normally an El Nino year means severe drought in Oklahoma. Not this season anyway. With our normally semi-dry to dry summers, I use the garden hose to water EVERY day in most areas and every other day in other areas that prefer dryer conditions. We have our own well, so I can also use the sprinkler without ill affects on my plants. It is just like rain water. The birds, butterflies, bees and amphibians love it too. When I hand water, the birds follow me from tree to tree, so I spray up into the trees and they chirp and sing for me. The occasional tortoise will come out of hiding for a long, cool drink, too. I set the mister on the tropicals and water-loving ferns etc. to keep them happy. This takes all day. I use soaker hoses under my veggies when it is very hot and very dry to prevent scorching and so the water will get down deep where the nutrients are and encourage deep roots. For under my Phlox and roses, &etc., I screw on a fan sprayer and let it run slowly, gently and deeply under them to prevent leaf-scorch, and do this as often as needed. I even water in the winter if it is a dry winter. Soil heave (freeze, thaw, freeze, thaw) is terrible here in Okie, and in dry winters this will kill plants and even small trees and shrubs. And of course, potted plants need a drink just about every day in the summer. That is how I have to do it here to keep mine alive year round. ~Annie

Yes science is science, but nobody has yet to explain any science of how anything about my original statements in this thread were incorrect (that's the problem). The reason, their simply not!!! You can twist my statements into anything, but I will always go back to my original statements. If my original statements were comprehended (without trying to turn them into something their not), I would be happy to learn how (if they were) wrong. But the problem is the statements simply are not being addressed as they were stated. Therefore saying something is wrong without even understanding what you are calling wrong, dosen't make any sense. That's why I needed to state them over and over so many times, to clarify the exact meaning of the statements first (because they just weren't understood correctly). Then I asked specific questions, that if answered would explain how my statements were incorrect. Those questions were never answered in any way, shape, or form (correctly/sufficiently or not) with all this so called science that there's supposed to be (that way I could learn if I was wrong). So all that has happened is climes that I'm wrong about everything, talk about all this science being science. Yet absolutely no science showing just how my statements were incorrect. Just claims of it being so, and trying to bully me into having a different opinion because that's what somebody else's opinion is. I'm all for an intelligent conversation, but to do that you simply need to understand my statement/questions correctly in the first place. Otherwise nothing said makes any sense, then how could it be an intelligent conversation? All I can do is my part and try to explain myself as best I can, even if that means trying over and over. But the other person simply needs to meet me half way and try to comprehend what I'm saying in order to be able to intelligently continue the conversation (if they actually want a intelligent conversation). Especially if their saying my statements are wrong, they simply need to understand them first. Otherwise intelligently explaining how/why their wrong is imposable.

A long time ago, I did a Mint Mate install(actual install, not live) onto a 16GB Gigaware USB flash drive. It booted slow as molasses and the first time running apps was just as slow. It ran fine afterward though. I considered getting a faster flash drive such as a SanDisk Extreme, but it wasn't it my budget at that time. I seem to remember playing around with bcd.exe but my memory is short. Some day I'll have to give EasyBCD a try. In the meantime, GRUB works for me. An extraordinarily boring (and embarrassing, mostly because I flubbed customizing GRUB2 because I'm too lazy to learn to use it properly right now) video of my installing Mint Mate alongside Windows 10 in a virtual machine... I suppose the point is that they can, at least sometimes, live happily beside one another. I was really expecting Mint Mate to offer to "install alongside windows" and auto-partition but it did not. Don't some other Ubuntu based distros do that? Or is it just full blown Ubuntu? Anyway, after all my stumbling, doing it incorrectly, redoing etc., Grub now reads exactly the way I want, remembers the previous boot choices etc. ... That's just a virtual machine though. I wouldn't suggest others try it on their real machines. I suppose if one were to practice setting up a dual boot system, a virtual environment would be the safe place to learn, right? BTW, I used Oracle's VirtualBox in the above videos. Free and open source. Oops, I just read the warning on the VirtualBox download page: "Please be aware that Windows 10 is not yet officially supported!" Oh well, seems to run fine for me.