Buy one for yourself, put a bow on it and say to DH, "oh thank you hunny" as you give him a hug. We do that a lot here. Buy something, tell another, put this up for my birthday, Christmas or whatever and then we get exactly what we want. We buy things and give to the DD and say let the boys wrap this for us. It is really as much fun as getting a surprise package.

By all means, take advantage of the guys offer to regrade it. Assuming they know what they are doing, it will make a huge difference in your enjoyment of the yard. It takes years of practice to become good enough to do it "good enough." For an experienced tractor driver, it should take no more than 2 hours to do your back yard. Whether you need more soil or not will be up to them. More soil usually will change the drainage. Let them decide what to do. Actually you might get two other estimates for the job and talk to them about what they propose to do. You are bound to learn something. If you have full sun, the Kentucky bluegrass is the turf that will hold up to the kids best. It is a sod forming grass, meaning it spreads to fill in weak spots. Fescue is a bunch grass that might spread to fill in by the time of the next ice age. Ask your wife where she might like to have the garden before you do the lawn. She'll want the sunniest place. Here is the 1-2-3 of grass growing as found in these forums over the past decade. 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. By mulching you help return fertility to the soil. 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. GardenWeb does not host pictures. If you have pictures hosted somewhere else on the Internet, GW can link to them. An Internet photo hosting site might be tumblr, photobucket, picasa, or some others. Then you need to use the correct HTML code so it shows up here. Here is that code. <img src="YOUR PHOTO URL GOES HERE"> You get your photo URL by bringing up the photo (in your browser at the host's site) and right clicking on it. Select Copy Link Location. Then paste that location between the quotes in the code above. The quotes are necessary for this to work. Don't leave them out. The photo URL should look like this http://www.photobucket.com/yourphotos/photoname.jpg Putting it all together it will look something like this... <img src="http://www.photobucket.com/yourphotos/photoname.jpg"> Then post your message like normal.

Shy, I thoroughly enjoyed every word you wrote; thank you so much for sharing this story. (you write so well!) I used to hear some of these stories from my dear FIL years back----he lied about his age so he could join the Army---- I think he was a strapping 16 year-old boy when he signed up. As you've written here, he also said the conditions for man and beast were horrific, but would only say so much, and then no more. I truly hope you will write more pieces; this was just rivoting. I can't tell you how many years (DECADES!) it's been since I've heard the word, "Darn!" used!!! I LOVED seeing it in your piece---it brought back a lot of memory-snippets! KJ PS---next time, don't type 'very long' next to your thread title---something so interestingly written was not long at all!

I skipped this thread, thinking, oh, I don't really live in a cottage. I am so glad I took the time this morning to read it. I love hearing the stories behind the homes. The comment about not being cottage prompted me to add mine. Our home is a late 70s typically California starter subdivision home. I did manage to get a design with only one window to the front, so I could pretend I had the craftsman bungalow I wished for. When my kids were hitting their growth spurt and there was no room in the living room for all the feet, we added our garden room. We have lived happily here for 28 years. The other day my sweetie was talking to bil and asked me, what style do we have in our home? I said, cottage? He said no. I said, craftsman? He said no. I said, lodge? He said, yeah, that's it. It isn't really of course, but we live a cottage lifestyle with a great love of the outdoors and our home is mainly decorated with twigs and pinecones and shells and rocks whatever other pretty things we find as we travel, with lots of heirloom fancy work thrown in for good measure. The front yard isn't even cottage, but we intend a major overhaul of that one of these days. I love love love the real cottages shown here, and those I've seen in other posts, but cottage is about where your heart is, right?