RDM

Sounds very similar to our situation. I seem to recall you posted some pictures before - remember a fire pit and think it was you when we were ranting about grass last year. It's a real challenge. Our back yard is a leach field for our septic system too. 2 separate sections with 4 lines each. You'd think the perk in the drainage area would help keep the grass healthy. But it seems the clay base in the soil compounds the challenge. I've been mulching the leaves for 10+ years now and still don't have a very thick thatch in most of our yard. The fresh grass in the spring loves the mulched leaves from the previous fall, but once the trees sprout and start their thing it's as if the grass can't compete and gives up. Anxious for our grounds keeper pro to provide some tips.

Thanks for moving this here. Same experience in our back yard and parts of our front yard with the trees. You've done a lot more experimentation with the different kinds of grass than I have. Hopefully our expert will be able to shed some light on the secrets. After all, golf courses have trees too. Yet, most courses have a thick stand of rough along the fairways that makes my hodge podge look like - #@$%&

Happy Birthday and many more to come 007! Appreciate everything you do for the forum and our hobby, profession, and/or cursed obsession that we all enjoy so much.

Welcome any suggestions you may have. Echo'ing CAPE's comments about what a challenge it is to grow grass around here. I mulch leaves in the fall, put down lime to offset the acid based clay soil and mulch the clippings with Gator blades. The popular trees along the back of our yard just suck all the nutrition out of the soil. In the spring the grass grows like gangbusters until the poplars break out in leaves and then it's like the grass puts the brakes on. Some years ago I reclaimed a half acre of our yard in front, which is interlaced with maples and 6 very large white pines. Used a power landscape rake to wind-row the rocks and debris. Hauled out 3 dump trucks and 2 30 yd dumpsters full of stumps, rocks and debris. Spread over 200 cubic yards of 50/50 (topsoil and compost) and put down over 300 lbs of grass seed. The end results were to grow a nice 1/2 acre plot of weeds. The grass starts reasonably strong in the spring and then goes to weeds when it gets warm.

Suspect the flyovers are prep for the 4th of July celebrations. Normal for them to do a few test runs to get their timing down on the final run so it coincides with the agenda, with close coordination from ATC at Dulles. Separately - thanks for the "why" on the upgrade. Was just curious what prompted it and how the transition is going. Don't care much about titles etc, but have been here since the beginning and with Eastern before since 97.

Just picked up .92" in about 15 mins with this latest round, and still pouring. FFW issued for a second time for FFCO.

Heck of a deluge here. Unfortunately don't know how much we got in the initial wave, but it was torrential for about 20 mins. My Vantage VUE bu batteries were old and when the power burped the memory was lost. Below is a video after things calmed down some. Traffic on the road in front of our house was at a standstill. Edit - may need to right click and "open in new window" to view. IMG_6552.MOV

Yup - Mitsubishi split-packs are one of the gold standards in split-packs. The newer inverter technology has very high SER ratings (efficiency). Plus, like Stormfly said, they have multiple-units now where there's only one outdoor compressor unit that can power up to 5 or more indoor FCUs (Fan Coil Units). With precharged freon lines, they are something Harry Homeower can self-install with a little electrical knowledge. My former employer used hundreds of split-packs in the middle-east and Afghanistan. On reverse cycle they provide heat too. But not all of them have the reverse cycle option. Beyond Mitsubishi, there's some other Japanese brands that are also very good. Hitachi being one of the other very good options. Japanese homes don't have central AC and heat. They heat and cool the room they are in when they are there because electricity is very expensive. Much more per kWh than here in the USA. So there's a lot of pressure on efficiency. When I lived there in the mid 90's, my electric bill in the summer routinely approached $1000 per month. And that was for a relatively small 3 bedroom house. Can't fathom what the electric bill would be to run a central AC unit like we have in the USA at the cost of electricity in Japan.

Those work great in dry climate. Worthless with our dew points around here. Many houses in west Texas have "Central AC" based on a swamp cooler. IE: Centrally located box on the roof that draws in ambient air over water wicking down various substances. They work pretty well when it is dry. Same in the Middle East. Used units just like in the picture a lot in Kuwait, Baghdad and Afghanistan, when it was dry. When the winds blew in from the Gulf and brought the humidity, it would become intolerable in a matter of 30 minutes and even the fan on its own didn't help a lot. The humidity was so bad that a cell phone taken outside would instantly condense the moisture on the outside of the phone. Same for glasses - impossible to use until l the surface temperature adjusted to outside ambient temps. A cell phone taken outside from inside an air conditioned building left a wet spot in your pants pocket that looked like you'd pissed yourself. Nearly everyone uses external phone holders to avoid the embarrassment.

Nie on impossible to find a regular ole manual these days. Only a handful of vehicles have them. Another dying trend, like cursive writing.

Learned how to drive a stick in my oldest brother's 67 Vette. That was awesome as a 16 year old. Was a small block, but had factor side pipes that sounded great, and burned your calves on exiting if you didn't pay attention. The second thing with a stick I drove was a Ford F-9000 dump truck that took both feet to operate the clutch (well, sort of... it was a beast) and no power steering.

Just got back from 4 days at Chincoteague. First time there. Got an OSV pass and had a couple hundred yards of beach to ourselves on Sunday. Was close to being an Old Milwaukee Light commercial (their slogan in the 80's was "It doesn't get any better than this!"). SST's are in the low/mid 70's there, so with a constant onshore breeze of 15-20mph and air temps in the low 80's it was actually borderline chilly at times under the sun shade. Driving back today the thermometer on our car nudged up a degree or two every 10-20 miles as we moved away from the Atlantic. When we got back to FFCO and opened the doors, it was a reminder of why we went to the beach. Stifling. Still 88/76dp

Picked up a quick 1.44" so far in several waves of wind and rain. Would downpour and then lull, then repeated several times. NWS radar projection shows some back building, albeit not as intense as these initial waves...

.90" in about 30 mins. FF Warning issued with the proverbial alert on our cell phones. The main culprit in our area is Difficult Run that meanders through N central FFCO. Many areas are prone to FF with the threshold of about 1.5"/hr is exceeded (SWAG) .

Nothing here too. With all the storms in recent days we've not received enough to even register on my Vantage VUE. We define the DC Split here IVO Vienna...

Only 51 now here near Vienna. What a difference from a few days ago.

Haha - That's hilarious. Brings back memories of my first tour in Frankfurt, Germany. On a calm summer evening with the windows open (no AC in Germany) you could hear the C-5's spooling up their turbofans at Rhein Main AFB from Sachsenhausen where I lived from 6 miles away. Those turbofans on a a C-5 have a very distinct scream like no other turbofan. Cicada activity last night and today was a bit subdued with the cooler weather. Expect it will take off again starting tomorrow.

Interesting. We're not far from each other and each trunk of our maple trees has hundreds or more shells on the trunk, not including just as many scattered on the ground at the base of each tree. They onslaught really exploded starting last Wednesday. They really congregate in numbers around maples, locust and other hardwoods compared to pines. But even our white pines have a hundred or more on each trunk. The birds are dive bombing the clusters on the ground. Some appear so gorged it's hard for them to lift off again.

Had a few dozen on several of our trees as of Wednesday. Starting Wednesday night they've exploded. The trunks of all our trees are now covered, except the pines. But even the pines have some on them. Each of our large maple trees have hundreds of shells and others in various stages of molting. The ground under the tree's canopy is a moving mass of crawling chaos.

The big gust that came through about 4:15 was impressive. Lost a large tree limb from a giant poplar in our back yard. Neighbors large pine across Lawyers Road from our driveway was uprooted with entire root ball in the air. The pine raked the power lines on our side of the road as it came down narrowly missing someone driving by on Lawyers. Was a 100+ foot pine about 36" across at the base (lots of potential energy released with the impact when it hit the road). Lawyers Rd was closed for about 2 hours as the neighbors helped me cut it up into chunks my Kubota could drag to the side to open the road again. Biggest problem was all the drivers who were determined to drive by despite the police having closed the road. Some even drove on the sidewalk along Lawyers Road as an attempt to get by.

Can relate... We have half a dozen cherry trees we planted 2 years ago. We were looking forward to a decent bloom this year. Just as they approached full bloom they stopped after the same cold snap and migrated straight to green. What did bloom was taken care of by the wind. Maybe next year (sounds like our annual ritual for snow! "next year") Took in all our tomato plants and geraniums last night. Glad we did - Got down to 30 here with a fairly heavy frost on the grass and roof.

Yep - we have holes all over our yard - especially around the base of trees. Been working evenings helping a neighbor trench 230 feet of 4" pipe to drain some low spots in his yard. As we approached the perimeter roots of a maple tree with the trench the nymphs were all over the place about 6" to a foot down. The cool weather is keeping them underground, for now at least.

Just after I finished up some gardening about 30 mins ago a cool breeze came through. Then it hailed for about 30 seconds before it started pouring. Would rain hard with some wind for a min or two and then letup or stop entirely, and then it would repeat. The on and off thing went on for about 20 mins. The "bands" were somewhat strange, like a little microburst that couldn't figure out what it wanted to do.

Yes - it was. Regrets for the snafu. Believe they were both GNX's. Not sure if you saw it or could perhaps catch it on reruns, which BJ often has on FIOS.

One of the televised car auctions on FIOS yesterday sold 2 GNs as a pair - with sequential VINs. Both were full optioned, sold from the same dealer to the same individual, who kept them until yesterday. One had around 800 miles and the other less than 600. Regret I don't remember the specifics on mileage and sales price. Was around $150K for the pair - I think.