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When you say a half-acre, do you mean your lot is half an acre or the actually lawn is half an acre? This makes a big difference.

Greg wrote:Any advice would be appreciated.....well any advice other than to mow my own dang yard!

When I lived in Dallas, a crisp $20 bill paid to a teenager across the street would make the grass on my quarter-acre lot short.

On the other hand, we just paid $1500 to a landscaper to lay down 22 yards of mulch on our beds. I've done it myself for the past few years, and will probably do it myself for the next few, but getting a pro with the proper equipment to edge and shape the beds correctly was worth it. The mulch alone would have cost us $450.

I probably have more square feet of beds now than I had of yard in Dallas.

It takes me 2-1/2 hours to mow about 3 acres of grass, using a Kubota diesel lawn tractor with a 60" belly mower, and a Honda push mower for touching up. I have lots of things to have to avoid, so there's little of it where I can mow at the full 10mph speed of that tractor. The local landscaper rate around here is $40 an hour, which includes equipment, which comes to $100. But I'll bet I couldn't find anyone to do it for less than $150 or $200, because they would take more time and do things that I don't bother to do. I can't find any dependable local teenagers out here who are willing to work for teenager pay.

We have to mow at least once a week during the spring and fall, so now you know why I do the mowing. I don't mind paying for the special landscaping once every several years, but $600 or $800 a month just to make the grass short would also make the supply of groceries short.

Rick "interpolating the above to an estimate of $50 or $75 for plain mowing in your case" Denney

bloke wrote:I guess I should feel lucky, then, that (of course, you have to go to the right places) around here mulch is $10/way-more-than-a-yard (very large scoop).

Speaking of costs of stuff (and since we're "off topic"), I just looked at my co-op natural gas bill and I'm paying c. $1.10/cu.ft. (last mo. used 97 & billed c. $108) Is that good, bad, or average?

It's $20 a yard around here, though the "yard" is similarly generous. The going rate for a 12-yard truckload is $225, but I prefer to get it one yard at a time in my truck. It's a lot easier to back my truck up to the bed and pitch the mulch onto the bed than it is to pick it up off the ground, put it in something, haul it to the bed, and then pitch it. Plus, there's no way to clean up our gravel driveway when a pile of mulch has been put on it.

You get natural gas from a pipeline and you live in the country? We get propane, which is about the same price as gasoline. We use about 800 gallons a season. The arithmetic is not pleasant.

If we expand our house, I'll probably have a 1000-gallon tank sunk into the ground and tell Amerigas to come get their 500-gallon above-ground tank. In-ground tanks can be filled full, and I could buy a whole season's worth of propane in the summer when I can shop the prices more easily.

Rick "who would prefer natural gas" Denney

bloke wrote:Speaking of costs of stuff (and since we're "off topic"), I just looked at my co-op natural gas bill and I'm paying c. $1.10/cu.ft. (last mo. used 97 & billed c. $108) Is that good, bad, or average?

That $1.10 is probably per 100 cubic feet (ccf), otherwise your bills would likely be in the thousands of dollars. I never bought into a "rate locking" contract, so I go month to month on whatever the gas company offers. Here in Cleveland, my last bill was ~$11/ thousand cu. ft (mcf). The cycle before it was ~$9, before that ~$12, and before that, $11.22 (between 90 cents and $1.2X per ccf). Based on those numbers I'd guess your rate to be "average." That being said, I live several hundred miles north of you, and endured several days of sub zero temperatures this winter. In which case, knowing nothing else about the natural gas commodity market in the mid-south, I'd say your rate leans toward "bad."

Para usted el señor, él es solamente una cadena del oro por acre.



¡Pero usted tenía paga mejor para arriba!