Auteck, I've been warned against afternoon "watering" as opposed to light "misting". Which one are you doing? I will try to get some updated pictures for you. heelsfan, I just came back from columbia, SC which is only 4 hours drive from here and what a difference in climate. It has rained here twice in the last 2 months yet yesterday in SC I got thunderstormed on 8 times in one day. It was like a rain forest. That is the kind of humid coastal plain weather that puts that tropical swamp grasses into high gear and we haven't had that here and we don't normally even get that kind of weather until August. If you're having or have had that kind of hot humid weather with temps in the mid 90's and above then that really isn't what I'm having to contend with. I did see some tall fescue that actually looked like it was in excellent shape though.

Just wanted to take a minute to thank the people that gave us some wonderful plants at the swap this year. The Banana legs turned out pretty well, the Black Krim were ok, but suffered just like the rest of my tomatos this year. The Brandywine was amazing, and took over my garden, but had ripening issues from the cold. The Angel's Trumpet is going to flower shortly, I think that I didn't feed it enough, do they normally bloom sooner? The Winter cabbage fed the baby bunnies well. Thanks again to all, are there plans for a fall swap? --plant_monkey

I'd try to zero in on the area that you like and then call real estate agents there. Find one that you get along with before you go off with any of them. Then you can ask questions. If you garden and have dogs, a planned community might not be your cup of tea, especially if there are rules about number and size of dogs. (We also have multiple dogs.) You can get a lot of great info by using Realtor.com (actual RE listings, and not Zillow) and plugging in the desired zip codes. And check out the Buying/Selling home forum, too. Nice people there. Here is a link that might be useful: Buying and selling homes forum

Oh my!! You are waaaaay overthinking this. We're going to save you a lot of time starting with mishmosh's info about KBG spreading by itself. You can dispense with overseeding from now on. Overseeding is a fescue and rye grass thing, not a KBG thing. The only reason to overseed KBG is to bring in some different cultivars which might be more cold tolerant, disease tolerant, more heat tolerant, or have a deeper green color. But once you have it down, it will take over. So now you have your fall back. Oh and don't top dress with soil unless you have low spots that fill with water when it rains. The soil you have is fine. If you don't think it's fine, we can help you with that, but don't get into the top dressing habit. I've seen lawns raised 10 inches above the designed level from 40 years of topdressing. Wanna see some pictures? KBG is one of the sod-forming type grasses that spreads by itself without any need for overseeding. If it becomes thin for some reason, assuming it is in relatively full sunlight, it will refill the thin areas without ever overseeding. Spring is not the time you want grass seed to germinate. If you were to seed in the early fall, which is what is recommended for cool season grasses, then water it lightly 3x per day, it would germinate in 3 weeks. That's all there is. When grass germinates in the spring, the tender roots often die in the summer heat. You ran into the other reason for not seeding in the spring - weed pressure. You don't have crabgrass and other summer annual weeds germinating in the fall. There is a rule about KBG and many other ground covers. The first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps, the third year it leaps. Just be patient and you will be rewarded. mishmosh mentioned deep and infrequent watering. What that means is one inch of water all at one time. Then don't water again until the lawn needs it. Put some tuna or cat food cans in the yard and turn on the sprinklers. Time how long it takes to fill all the cans. My oscillator sprinkler takes 8 hours on a full sweep. Your sprinklers likely will go much faster, but I like a long, slow soak. If you get runoff before filling the cans, stop watering and stop the clock. Give the water 15 to 30 minutes to soak in and resume watering (and the clock). The runoff problem will eventually go away. Remember the time it takes to fill all the cans, because that will be your watering time from now on. In the hottest heat of summer you should water about once a week. As it cools off change that to once every 2 weeks, 3 weeks, and then monthly for the cool months until about April. This coming Labor Day you can put down some fertilizer. I use organic fertilizer all the time, but if you want to use chem I'm not going to fight about it. I would suggest using an organic at least once a year to keep your soil in good health. I believe the KBG folks like to fertilize 3 times in the fall. The last one is the most important one for next year. They wait until the grass stops growing but is still green. Then they use a fast acting, high N, fertilizer like urea. The idea is to force feed the roots but not force the plant to grow. The new growth would be susceptible to freeze, so wait until it is no longer growing. Then in the spring you do NOT have to fertilize again until Memorial Day. The only thing to do in the spring is early preemergent herbicide. Apply when you first see forsythia blooming in your neighborhood. Then in April you can spot spray any broadleaf weeds with Weed-b-Gon or Weed-b-Gon Chickweed, Clover, and Oxalis Killer. That should do it for chemicals. Put the RoundUp away. If you think you need it, please ask here first. There are plenty of alternatives for specific issues. Always mulch mow at the mower's highest setting. I would not reseed, dethatch, aerate, or topdress. If you are doing everything right, you should never need to do any of that. All you have to do is water, mow, and fertilize for the rest of the year. This plan should save you a lot of time and money over what you were planning. Here are a couple of motivational pictures. First is a bunch of KBG lawns. Thanks for morpheuspa for posting this summertime picture several years ago. The main difference between the green one and the rest is the green one was watered once a week while the rest were watered daily. Morph uses only organic fertilizer, by the way. This next picture shows the effectiveness of organic fertilizer.The green spot was caused by alfalfa pellets. They were applied to this zoysia lawn in mid May and the picture was taken in mid June. It takes about 3 weeks for organic fertilizers to work, but they clearly do work. Thanks to mrmumbles for posting this.