No problem posting a complete question. If you had not then we would be asking those questions. Looks like you had your camera in upside down landscape position. In the more distant brown spot there is a green spot in the middle. Then extending from the center of the green spot to the left is a green stripe. That stripe goes out and seems to join another green stripe that cuts across sideways. Did you recently have a sprinkler installed and would those be the pipelines? If not, why do you think those stripes are green? Have you watched your sprinkler in action? Is there any possibility that they don't cover evenly? Are those two areas higher or lower than the surrounding lawn? Do you get standing water right on those spots? It would seem you are watering far too often. As I love to tell people, I have only just started watering my lawn at the edge of the Texas desert. I started 2 weeks ago and only covered about 10% of the yard. The rest looked pretty good. Then yesterday we got 1/2-inch of rain, so I should be good for several more weeks depending on the humidity. The point is, it's almost July and most of my yard has not been water YET! You're watering too much. Put out some tuna or cat food cans and time how long it takes to fill them with your sprinkler. That is how long you should water when you water. The idea is to provide water deep down in the soil so the grass roots will grow down there to get it. Then you can let the surface of the soil dry out completely before you have to water again. Let the grass tell you when to water, but the general guideline is to water once per week with normal high temps in the 90s. Water once every 2 weeks with high temps in the 80s. Once every 3 weeks in the 70s. Then once a month the rest of the year. There are other factors to consider including soil structure, soil type, grass type, mowing height, shade, clouds, humidity, wind and some others; but what it boils down to is those guidelines. You're in Maine. Do you even get temps in the 90s? But I don't suspect you're watering is the issue with your grass unless the sprinkler is not hitting right in those two spots. I think the spot in the foreground is different from the one farther back. This one up front does not have a green spot in the middle. Here's something else to try. First, have you seen many (or any) Japanese beetles or June bugs around your porch lights this past few weeks? If you had an ungodly number of those things, they might cause that much damage this early. Normally you would see the damage in late July. Try digging up a square foot of grass in the dead spots looking for little grubs. If you see more than 12 in one square foot of digging, then you have a problem. A normal lawn can handle a certain amount without showing any damage. If you see more than a dozen, please write back before you do anything about them. And don't tell your lawn care company because they will go ahead and spray. You should try to avoid broadcast insecticides because microscopic insects make up a very important fraction of your soil microbiology. There are organic ways to deal with the grubs. Also try sticking a screwdriver into the ground in your brown spots and in the green spots. Try it in the really green spots, too. It could be something is killing the beneficial fungi in your soil in those spots.

I've always killed nicads absolutely dead -- with a flashlight -- before most recharges. i've also left them on (sloooow) chargers for months when they weren't in use. I have some I bought in 1980 that still work well. Of course I've thrown about as many away, too. Biggest problem I've found is internal shorts, usually after a few years of use. Cells that are allowed to get hot frequently seem to fail quicker, but I don't know the mechanism or chemistry. I use a short-buster made from a couple of capacitors and some diodes (it charges off house current) to zap shorted cells. It clears a bad short maybe a third of the time. I think bigger capacitors would do better but I don't know at what point the cases might split. I've had two cells, I think, of maybe 100 reverse polarity. don't know why, couldn't fix 'em. I've replaced cells in packs but it's a pain without the appropriate equipment. The memory effect thing is one of the most fascinating issues I'm aware of. The popular press (a member of which pays my pitiful salary) turned early sketchy reports into a really scary sure thing -- scared me enough to cause the behavior i described above. But the current thinking that seems most believable to me is that it takes repeated partial discharges to create a charge memory, and the loss is usually only about 10 percent. Three full-charge, full-discharge cycles supposedly eliminate that. Of course there may be a new and different scientific finding at any time. Or maybe not -- nicads are being replaced as Dave Danger says so maybe the issue will finally go away. Don't worry: Writers of popular press articles will perpetuate lots of other questionable information.

It's great to follow this thread, from skepticism to acceptance of rebuilding batteries. I live in Japan but by coincidence all of my battery tools are US brands, and the shipping for replacement Ni-Cd packs is really steep, not to mention the price. After some research I ordered some sub-C cells from an eBay supplier called thundercells and managed to cobble them into the case for my 18-volt WORX hedge trimmer. The cells had tabs on them, which made soldering fairly easy, but it was still tricky (and be careful of short circuits while working because the cells are partly charged. The rub came because I substituted 2500 maH cells for the original 1300 maH, hoping for longer working time. i found that if I left the pack in the charger until the green light came on, it was only partly charged. Big worry! Then I discovered if I put it back in after a few seconds, the red light came back and it went through another charging cycle. If I repeat this 3 or 4 times, it becomes fully charged. Now I am happy again! I get way more full-power cutting time than with the old cells. Total cost was $23 for the cells including shipping from China, and I'll say 4 hours repair time. This seems to make the reputable rebuilding services a pretty good deal, and if I were in the US I'd use them. However there's another set of cells coming, for my trusty 9.6 volt drill.

I was born in Morganton but grew up near Lenoir, both in the western foothills of NC. I spent six years in Chapel Hill trying to lose my accent, then worked for a year or two each in Baltimore, Md and Greenville, SC, married, moved to New Jersey for a year, moved to Tennessee (Chattanooga and later Knoxville), then back to Taylors (Greenville), SC. We lived there for the past 30 some years until I retired in the summer of '05 and we moved to Raleigh to be near our younger daughter and new granddaughter, and as close to Chapel Hill as I can afford. My work allowed me opportunities to become very familiar with most of the states we have lived in, but so far we have traveled to England and France more often than to other parts of the US outside of the southeast. My maternal grandparents were farmers in Casar, NC (Cleveland Co. near Shelby) and even though I developed an interest in growing things from them and my parents at an early age, their hard life did not recommend farming or factory work as a career. When we bought our first house I started out looking for a place to squeeze a few tomato plants and flowers in amongst the shrubbery. Then we moved back to Greenville, SC and my wife's grandparents gave us the use of their 3,000 sq. ft. garden. It's been downhill ever since. This obsession with growing anything and everything got so bad that my next door neighbor in Greenville started calling me the plants' slave after I made the mistake of loaning him a book about how plants beguile us into doing their bidding by offering us fruit, flowers, etc. in return. Now that I am retired and living here only minutes from the JC Raulston Arboretum, North Car. Botanical Garden and Duke Gardens I have the opportunity to learn more about the plants I have been trying to grow and about the insects and other creatures that are part of the whole experience.