Well, after some more research, I've made some progress on identifying the weeds, and figured I'd share... I'm almost positive #1 is Virginia Buttonweed I think #2 might be nutsedge. Can someone confirm that? As far as #3 goes, I think it is bermuda grass. But I think I actually have some bermuda and crabgrass, particularly where the lawn meets the street. And now begins the long process of trying to revive my lawn. My current plan is... 1. Try to control the weeds as best I can for now by spraying them with weed control for lawns and/or picking them by hand. Already started and it seems to be slowly killing the weeds and leaving the grass intact. 2. Come early-September, I'm going to fill in some depressed areas of the lawn with topsoil 3. Top dress the rest of the lawn with a thin layer of top soil. 4. Add some milorganite (unless someone has a better suggestion) 5. Seed entire yard with tall fescue, or maybe a mix of tall fescue and kentucky bluegrass 6. Water daily until grass starts to grow, then only twice a week for a few weeks, then only once a week. 7. Pray that tons of grass grows and chokes out the weeds 8. Come early spring, spread pre-emergent herbicide on the lawn Thoughts? This post was edited by ryanhaub on Sun, Aug 4, 13 at 0:40

Oh the grass is there. Look harder. If that is at least 14 inches long, then it is King Ranch bluestem. For years the state has been planting it in the medians along all the interstate highways. Now it is invading everywhere. I have a house in George West which is trying to be invaded by the KR bluestem. I am surrounded by it on 1 acre and it had made inroads before I bought the house. I have allowed my St Augustine to grow unmowed and that seems to have stopped the weeds. I do not have enough of the bluestem to experiment with keeping it mowed as a turf grass. If it would stay down, it might actually make a nice, native, lawn. The color is good. The only problem is the seed stalks.

Hmm, I just tried loading it in Google Chrome, and it doesn't work. Apparently it works in: * Safari 3 Public Beta or later * Firefox 1.5 or later * Internet Explorer 7 or later I did try it in Internet Explorer 6, and it gives you a warning message, but does appear to load in spite of itself. Care to try it again? Thanks! http://gallery.me.com/link.dupont#100068

Must of been lucky. Bought an MTD at Ace hardware (Ace Special Edition) with a 42" cut and 16hp Tecumseh. Aside from the normal problems of your MTD of that era IE having the grille mounts break off after a few years) it's been great, and it was only replaced as it was really starting to not work well on hills, and in the last year has been a case of "What's going to break next when I mow?". A key to remember is any NEW tractor in that range is going to be light duty. If you have more an acre to mow with it, a newer, higher end, used model is a probably a better option. You'll get a lot of life out of one though if you keep it well maintained. Take care of it and there is no reason why you should not get a good, usable life of about 10-12 years. one other thing to keep in mind; the chief complaints of many people on a mower it seems is the motor. That is the most important part of a mower besides the transmission on a Hydro equipped tractor. The engine is going to what will go wrong 9 time out of 10 on a mower, and is often going to be to blame for issues with cutting (due to lack of power) and reliability.