Lawn renovation ideas needed???

[cowboydoc]

What I can't stand is the amount of people who "walk" into my office and tell me they are on disability. {{Sometimes I want to ask, mentally?}}

Dr. Dan you are so right about that! When I was doing my residency I had to work at an outreach clinic. Probably 30 or 40% of the people came there just to stay on disability or to be put on disability. Yes they had little things wrong with them but nothing that would prevent them from working. The stupid doc that ran that place would just sign whatever the people wanted. The school thought she was a saint because she ran that outreach clinic but it was very rare that we really treated homeless people. Most of them were regular people who had homes and jobs. Some even had insurance but didn't want to have to pay their deductible or co-pay! She would see them. It was so unethical it really made me mad. I refused to work there and went before the board to tell them what was going on. They didn't want to hear it because she brought in so much publicity but what a sham it was! I don't get very many of those in my practice. Every now and then I will get some because I do IME's for insurance companies but I have yet to see one that legitimately deserved to be on disability. Then there's guys like yourself that still work and are in a wheelchair. Yes it makes me mad too!

 

[TerryinMD]

DrDan,

I just reread this thread and noticed something that you may wish to reconsider.

In the original message, you mentioned that the field had some swales in it. You may want to see if the swales were originally put in to divert water. We have them all over our subdivision. They were originally put into to direct water to a large pond which was used to irrigate a large potato field. In fact, we have one family which placed their home in a swale and, guess what, their basement floods. It was pointed out to them prior to the construction and they ignored the warning.

Terry

 

[gordon]

My x wifes uncle was on disability. Yes it was a sham, he had a bad back. Her father always used to say that yea he had a bad back, a big lazy streak up it.

Whenever there was work to be done his back would start hurting. Then when the work was done all of the sudden his back was fine. Amazing ain't it. Man that used to run me hot.

Gordon

 

[Bird]

Gordon, I suspect most of us know some folks on "disability" who shouldn't be, and I've sure known a bunch of them. A former next door neighbor, and alcoholic, "retired" on disability long ago because of back problems. He periodically (when his wife threatens to leave him) lays off the booze for a couple of weeks, gets around great, etc., but if when you see him, he complains about his back, you know he's fallen off the wagon again./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

Of course, I guess those folks are smarter than I am. I had a devil of a time arguing with doctors before I got hired by the police department because I had polio when I was two years old and have some minor scars on one foot from surgery several years later resulting from the polio. Anyway they were afraid I'd want a disability pension before I put in 20 years. And I had an on duty back injury in a car wreck (we hit hard enough to break my seat belt); missed one day of work and was on light duty for a week. And darn it, I retired just short of 25 years on a long service pension, when if I'd applied for and gotten a disability pension, I sure would have saved a lot of income tax money./w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif

Bird

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Have you considered solarizing? I am thinking of doing that to my garden.

I did two lawns at my old house. First one I rented a sod cutter, cut out the old sod, hauled it away, broke the california clay with a front tine tiller, added top soil and planted. Man, I though I was gonna die each step.

Front lawn was much easier. I asked the guy the driveway company hired to haul off the old driveay how much he would charge to scrape the lawn. 15 minutes later the lawn was in the back of his dump truck. MUCH easier. I still had to till and amend before planting.

My advice would be to scrape the old sod off first. Put it in a pile and compost it if you don't want to waste the good biomass. Solarizing the ground after you remove the old sod will get rid of any grass seeds and roots you missed if you can afford to wait the 3 months of prime sun. Then till and grade the new lawn.