Thanks bogman for the info, I am going to use 1953. I was 12 then and my last year of Little League. Remember my Dad saying that this was the first rotary mower. I just now have to decide what asking price when I sell it. I guess I can claim to being the oldest guy on here unless saxman1 lets us know how old he is. Thanks a lot for everybodies help.

Here in northern Utah there has become a push to get people to remove some existing lawn and replace it with hardscape and more planting areas that include shrubs and perennials that are good drought tolerant choices for this area. We do not get a lot of rain and the population is steadily increasing. Water is becoming more expensive all the time and yet there are still people who insist on having the big green lawn and then complain that their water bill is huge in the summer. We have to irrigate whatever is planted or most likely it will not survive here in the hot summer. Localscapes.com showcases an idea that includes having lawn only in a central open space to be used for recreation by people and pets and then landscaping the yard to include lots of seating areas, patios, trampoline areas and planting beds that are mulched with drip irrigation to save water. The idea is that lawn should not be the default groundcover. I have noticed over the past few years that more people are trying to incorporate more of these ideas into their own yards, such as flipping the strip and removing grass in the side yard. Some new homes are being landscaped using this method which is great! I have been slowly making changes every year and plan on doing more this year. I think eventually most people will be forced into making some changes or will just have to have a brown lawn in the summer since the water rates keep going up. The state of Utah implemented a tiered water rate change to try and keep people from using too much water but of course those who don't mind paying $$$ every month will continue to have their big green lawns.

" 1-2 hours of direct light a day " You will not get any variant of any type of grass to grow successfully under these conditions that will ever please you. It'll sprout. It'll grow for a while. Then struggle. Then die. 1-2 hours of sun per day is deep shade to mostly shady. All grasses are at least part sun--absolute minimum and strongly prefer part shade to full sun. People will tell you that you can grow grasses in lower light conditions. This is sort-of-correct, with massive amounts of care and constant coddling. Sometimes. But tree edges aren't conducive to that, and it usually involves a lot of northlight and/or reflected light. You don't seem to have that. My advice? Embrace things like bleeding hearts and other very pretty low light plants that are beautiful and appropriate to moist, low-light areas. Or embrace the moss (edit to remove incorrect info). Fun fact: Moss killing is really reliable if you're out spraying your lawn with iron sulfate. Your standard 2-4 oz per gallon solution, sprayed on moss, will take it right out. Dish soap...not so much unless reasonably highly concentrated, enough so to be an issue for other plants (salts will desiccate many other plants as well as mosses, particularly younger and more tender ones). Save a plant, green it with a light dose of iron instead of wasting the Dawn in the yard for that particular purpose. I use a quick shot of iron in the gardens in fall and let the moss bodies decay over winter, a warning to other mosses to beware. :-) Plus I get a little moss on the north face where the hose sits. No biggie, but if I'm standing there...

Yeah, I can already hear the excuse coming because if I didn't know what happened, I would have pronounced it dormant. due to the location and visual from a distance. Unfortunately, proving that will be almost impossible. Most herbicides can and will burn the lawn if the temperature is above 80-85 when applied and in sunlight (and blanket spraying is not recommended at any time unless the problem is also very wide-spread). You know that now...they should have known that, but, as Sherry noted, they had a timeline and probably a boat payment to make. Spot spraying herbicides later in the evening can be OK if you know your lawn is up to it. But that's only true on established lawns, is very herbicide-dependent, and not something I'd do over a wider area. I did it on my own a few days ago in two tiny areas of less than a square foot to remove a piece of nutsedge and a tiny bit of creeping Charlie that had gotten started in a dormant bit, but I was very careful not to overspray and I was using an herbicide that's not particularly known to cause damage even in heat. The good news. Some of that is going to recover because it's top burn. The blade and crown burned, but from the before shot, the grass very clearly has lots and lots of carbohydrates stored in the roots to use to regrow the crown and blade. That does take a lot of energy, and some time, but keep that watered and it should work. The bad news: These idiots managed to hit this at, quite literally, the worst possible moment on the calendar when carbohydrate reserves in the roots are at their lowest point, so some of it is NOT going to recover. I can't see the grass type at this distance (and I'm pretty visually disabled so have trouble with plant ID even up close sometimes unless the color stands out), but hopefully at least some of it is Kentucky bluegrass. Bluegrass spreads when well-fed, so your Labor Day feeding will encourage that to fill right back in. First, fire them. Or restrict their care to mowing it if they do that. Taking over your own care is very easy if they won't do it right. Second, water. Keep the soil damp to moist for a week or so in the burned area to see where you are, if rainfall doesn't do it. Just moist, not wet or soaked or squishy or puddled or... This is the one case where I'm actually going to recommend shorter, frequent watering. Thirty minutes, every other day? If it works to keep it damp, sure. But just for a week--we do not want to set off a fungal infection in that yet and the lawn is stressed. Cut it off dead after that and resume weekly watering unless... Third, seed. If you're really not seeing recovery when you spread the dead stuff and look down, you might want to reseed. Normally I'd give it longer, but you're on the clock here, and Labor Day is really the outside acceptable date for reseeding (you could re-sod that area much later, however--out to about September 20th or so). If it comes down to that, get back to us. There's a whole rigmarole for that. And for general lawn care if you choose to do it yourself--it's pretty easy--or just dictate what they're going to do in the future (which they usually will disobey because...hey--boat payment). Watering: Weekly, deeply, if rainfall isn't doing it, a full inch at a time in most soils, but there are some exceptions, a very few. That's the general rule, although during very hot periods, you can certainly nudge that down to every 5 days or so and I won't argue. (How do I do it personally? I don't water. My bluegrass lawn is allowed to go dormant and return when rainfall returns, but it's fully mature and healthy enough that this is not a problem). Feeding: Four times yearly (three can be acceptable). Memorial Day, Labor Day, October first, and when the last mow of the year is done, give or take some. The first three can be organic or synthetic, the last has to be synthetic. Either one of the last two is optional as long as the other is done, so a very cold year may end in October, or a year where you're not sure may end with delaying October's feeding but doing the shutdown feeding later in October or early November. For Maryland (and up here in PA), both can almost always get done as even December features green grass these last three decades. Weed and Feed: Never. It does neither job well as the appropriate weeding time is not the correct feeding time. Spot spray weeds, if any, as they appear. Try not to apply synthetic feeding to a damp lawn as it can burn the lawn--which is how Weed and Feed is supposed to be applied. Really, once established and healthy, lawns are mostly butt work. You sit and look at it because it mostly does its own thing. Those two weeds are the only two I've sprayed all summer, and they're only there because the lawn is partially dormant and rains just resumed. If I'd ignored them, the sedge would have grown, but the Charlie would get choked out.