I recently Googled my place and was shocked to see my garden. It looks a lot better from the eye in the sky.... Here is a link that might be useful: My Garden View

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.

AuntJen I'm sorry I don't mean to hijack your thread, but your name came up in a thread I started ...... I LOVE Mexican-style colors and I'm looking for one in particular that was posted..... um, if you wouldn't mind, any chance you would post more photos from your home? ;) Or possibly email them to me if you don't want to post on the forum? Ducking back down and getting out of the way of the drapes thread .....

I started my interest in photography while stationed in Germany from 1968 till 1972. i came back from Europe with two Pentax Spotmatics & 19 Takumar lenses, plus a Minolta C330 Twin lens med format camera, a 4x5 century graphic press camera, and a complete color darkroom but unfortunately a year after i returned it was all stolen. When i retired in June I decided i wanted to get back into nature photography as a retirement hobby, however I had no equipment and being on fixed income i had very limited financial resources. Needless to say, at $1000 and up, a DSLR was way off in the future, but with the advent of digital the price of 35mm film cameras has dropped to peanuts. With a little research I discovered that the Pentax DSLR's are compatible with nearly all Pentax lenses ever made so I decided to get a good Pentax 35mm film camera and collect a few lenses and accessories to get me going. I found a website for an online auction sponsored by Goodwill Industries and in reviewing the site I discovered that they have loads of photo gear, and it generally goes for a song. By example, I bought a Pentax ME super with a 50mm normal lens, 28-70mm zoom, 70 to 300mm zoom, a flash unit, camera bag and a long list of misc. goodies for the whooping sum of $62 +S&H. i continued watching for those combined sets and within three months I had acquired 5 cameras and 11 lenses including as 1000mm tele, plus an auto bellows, a ring flash for macro, and on Ebay i got a nice padded luggage style case. Total investment to that point was under $400. Three weeks ago I was checking Craigslist for my area, and by mistake I hit a tab for a neighboring state. When i looked under photo gear, what did i see, a Pentax *ist body in like new condition for $200. Now I will admit that i dont have auto focus, but that is the only feature of the DSLR that i don't have, and considering that when i learned photography through the lens metering was still in its infancy, i am fully comfortable with using depth of field and manual focus. Now i have the full enjoyment of the hobby and i can set a few dollars aside each month until i can buy a Pentax K20 or K7 in the spring. Oh yes...today I bought a Pentax 35mm film camera that has auto focus so when it arrives I will have two auto focus lenses too, not bad for another $45 investment.