JAMES! What have we said about watering frequency?!?!?!

So anyway, my lawn looks very much like that. Some of it looks great and some has brown tips. We've had temps of 104 a couple days this week, but all the grass is getting the same heat. Only patches look bad. My brown tips look raggedy when you get down and look at it. I have not inspected further, but until I do I'm assuming this is insect damage. As I recall you have checked your yard for grubs and chinch bugs. It might be time to check again. Grubs do not chew the blade tips off, so look for other bugs. You might look for snails. I've seen a bunch of those tiny snails with the white shells, but I have not noticed any damage. Maybe that is the damage they do?? I'm going to spray molasses and shampoo when I get a chance. Maybe Sunday or maybe tomorrow morning.

I don't think I've seen this cross section view by the concrete in the second picture. It looks like you have about 1.5 inches of excess soil out there. Is that how the house came to you or have you topdressed and created that issue?

I know I know I know. But its been crazy hot and dry here in Houston. As result I'm having to irrigate more frequently/deep. I live in Cypress with is Northwest suburbs and the rain had missed us completely the other day. I don't remember the last time I had rain and on top of that, my irrigation system was out of order for a week n I finally got around to fix it yesterday. What do you do for grub treatment?

Are you talking this area about excess soil?

For excess soil I was looking at the other pic showing the edge of the concrete and the grass sitting way up higher above it. I've seen worse...

I've never had grubs, so don't know. Since micro arthropods (tiny insects) is a major class of microbes in the soil, I really shy away from insecticides. Of course my wife tosses Sevin dust around willy nilly for her flowers. For flowers I spray the plant with watered down molasses to deter insects.

Oh ok. My excess soil was like that when I got the house.

I have lots of pictures of too much topsoil. Most of them are difficult to see, but that one has a real 3-d effect. My house came with poor drainage planning and too much topsoil. Rain water is diverted toward my garage instead of bypassing the house to the sides. We had an 11-inch rain overnight a couple years ago which resulted in about 4 inches in the garage. We barely escaped flooding the house, and considering that we had just moved in that very same day, that would have been pretty depressing.

For flowers I spray the plant with watered down molasses to deter insects.

I threw that statement out there and didn't explain. Pest insects seem to be able to "see" stressed out plants. One of my organic mentors showed me an experiment he was doing in his greenhouse. He had three identical plants in identical pots with different soils. One was generic Walmart soil. One was generic Walmart plus compost. The last one was Walmart, compost, and some rock dust powder he was playing with. The plants were in 4-inch pots and the plant canopies touched each other. The plant with no compost was covered with aphids while the other two had none. That demonstrates that pests are attracted to unhealthy plants. That may seem unrelated but it is known that plants have genes which activate when the plant is healthy to protect the plant from disease and pests. How? Apparently by making the plant invisible to the pests. You can achieve the same/similar result by spraying the plant with molasses, milk, or other liquid organic food material. The organic food feeds the 20 or so layers of microbes living on the outside surfaces of the plants. Those microbes interact with the plant to activate the self preservation genes and make the plant less obvious to the bugs. I don't have scientific references, but they must be out there. This was 40 years ago and year after year the same science fair project came to regionals. Back then nobody knew there were so many microbes living in the soil and on the outside of plants, and nobody knew that they needed food.