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My St. Augustine is still green with just twice a week watering (but you better believe I water the crap out of it on those two days, early AM and again after the sun goes down).

All of my neighbors water just as much or more than I do (including on restricted days), and their stuff is mostly brown. Their issue? They mow way too low. Like nearly scalping level. Gotta run the mower at the highest setting in this kind of heat for StA.

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How much is your water bill?

I just got mine for $600.

Our last one was $450 with keeping the new landscape healthy and the pool. Front yard grass is so so. Expect this month will be similar/

just got mine $450.

Lawn is lush but I've been flooding everything to keep it alive. Spent too much money redoing landscaping this year to replace a bunch of it. So far, only about 10 things have given up the ghost.

Boxwoods are holding on for dear life as are the barberries.

Last water bill was $350. Bigger gut punch this week was the $600 electric bill.

akaggie05 said:

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Last water bill was $350. Bigger gut punch this week was the $600 electric bill.

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You need a new energy provider (if you can shop...)

Looks like rain chances this weekend are dropping out.

Nooooooo.

Backyard zoysia is still looking pretty good but this has been a rough summer with so little water. What I have yet to figure out is: 2800sq house with 4 people and water bill has consistently been around $70 a month for nearly 2 years now. And this is with obviously using sprinkler system enough to maintain green grass.

Before that it was literally never under $120, even in transition fall/spring months with little landscaping water or hot winter showers. Our summer water bills used to easily surpass $200-250.

No idea what changed but not complaining!!

Yeah im outside doing lawn work staring at heavy rain north of Prosper and hearing thunder in the clouds south of me in over Allen. Its just depressing

So is the way these front split to miss Dallas have to do with the heat island thing?

I think the heat island and the lakes. I've always attributed to us in prosper missing the bad stuff because of ray roberts. The lake takes some juice out of the storms.

App has been predicting rain the past 2 hours. Nothing.

Glad I kept my watering schedule today.

Cooler air and rain in Prosper. Feels amazing.


I could use some cold air though

Looks like you're getting some now?

Was nice walking the dog. Still too hot and humid but no sun and a little breeze.

Three prosper homes hit by lightning tonight. Crazy

Opened my garage to let it cool off. Easily 30* hotter inside.

One bolt was damn close to me.

Absolute said:

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So is the way these front split to miss Dallas have to do with the heat island thing?

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I think we pissed off the weather gods with our horrible driving or something. So frustrating being in North Dallas and seeing rain to the North and South which decides to form one cell East of the city.

ChoppinDs40 said:

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One bolt was damn close to me.

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Pretty sure there was a house on fire in your hood earlier.

We had one hit two blocks over that somehow didnt catch fire. Good for them.

I wouldn't be surprised. It was a huge bolt.

Knock on wood. Our street are all 1 stories and the houses directly behind are tall 2 stories.

One on our street has the lightning rod system and a house directly behind me has it also. Hopefully I catch some residual protection from it.

FTAG 2000 said:

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ChoppinDs40 said:

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One bolt was damn close to me.

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Pretty sure there was a house on fire in your hood earlier.

We had one hit two blocks over that somehow didnt catch fire. Good for them.

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DFW scanner says Field street (in town), one in the neighborhood across from willow ridge/la cima, and one in phase 2 artesia.

I see no news on Star Trail fb page.

Not a single drop yesterday.

ChoppinDs40 said:

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FTAG 2000 said:

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ChoppinDs40 said:

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One bolt was damn close to me.

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Pretty sure there was a house on fire in your hood earlier.

We had one hit two blocks over that somehow didnt catch fire. Good for them.

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DFW scanner says Field street (in town), one in the neighborhood across from willow ridge/la cima, and one in phase 2 artesia.

I see no news on Star Trail fb page.

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It was the new Parks neighborhood across Legacy and directly behind the church on Teel.

We had a few drops, but not much more. Felt like it was going to be a bad storm night walking outside but nothing. This summer has been miserable.

Only positive has been no overnight hail / wind events. That's pretty much all I got.

1/2" of rain yesterday

Earlier this year the house next door was struck. Loudest boom I've ever experienced. I think I instantly levitated 3 feet out of bed.

It ended up starting a fire in their walls but fortunately it was contained. The remodel in their home where needed is nearing completion.

It killed the TV in our living room, and within 72 hours we had about 1/2 a dozen LED disc/can lights stop working.

I'm getting what I believe is more downstream stuff as the year goes on. 3 of 4 outdoor speakers rattle w/the slightest bass. In the living room half of the speakers have started rattling w/any bass or when changing icons in apps like netflix.

It's been an asswhip with all of the gremlins that I can only trace back to that strike.

I'm thinking of ripping all my Bermuda up and going full zoysia.

Is that emerald, toro? Pallisades?

Zeon.

Didn't want to go Emerald (even though it's a darker green), because it doesn't have the shade tolerance of Zeon or Palisades.

Palisades is a wide blade, similar to St Augustine. Zeon is a fine blade, which better resembles Bermuda.

3" of rain yesterday in Arlington. It POURED for the better part of an hour.

Arlington has been hogging all this rain! Still nothing since about July 3 here in Farmers Branch. My yard is like Aggie football- I pay too much money for it to look this awful

The Collective said:

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Only positive has been no overnight hail / wind events. That's pretty much all I got.

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Brother I work in roofing. It's a mixed bag for me.

Does it handle the shade well? I need to redo part of my front yard that is mostly in shade all day, but I don't want to do St. Augustine.

Technically this was my third summer with the Zoysia. I did a ton of research on varieties of zoysia and how they handle shade. Ended up choosing between Palisades and Zeon. I wanted it to resemble the look of find blades Bermuda instead of St Augustine so ultimately went with Zeon. From everything I've read and have been told, Palisades can handle shade just a little bit better but it was basically a negligible difference.

A chunk of my Bermuda in the backyard was thinning and dying out completely year over year due to shade issues. I would have the tree from my neighbor consistently trimmed over my property line to try to mitigate the damage, but the reality was I was only getting about 3 hours of sun in certain parts of the yard.

The Zeon is as thick across the entire yard today as the day I installed it. The growth is regulated in the shady parts compared to full sun. Meaning, the full sun areas definitely grow quicker but I have not experienced any thinning. Now, I do not keep this mowed with a reel mower at a golf course-level height. My wife wanted a yard where her feet could sink into the grass instead of resembling a putting green, so I actually keep it consistently at about 2.5-3" with a rotary mower (keep the blade VERY sharp). Grass looks amazing and anyone that sees it in person thinks it's fake at first. It is definitely one of the densest turf grasses you can get. It almost has its own weed regulation simply because of how the density. It can resemble a thick carpet.... Which means a couple times a year it needs to be verticut to remove thatch (buy a $150 machine off Amazon...
Super easy process).

Where people go wrong with Zoysia is they don't mow often enough, and they think they need to fertilize it often like Bermuda. I put literally 1 to 2 single applications of nitrogen on the lawn all year. That's it. Anything more and you might run into fungus issues in the transition months of spring and fall.

My wife absolutely loves the grass and I recommend it to anybody looking to replace Bermuda that is thinning out due to shade. Full disclosure though..... I hate St Augustine grass as well, even though that's typically the highest shade tolerant warm season grass you can get.