What resulted in few answers to your last post was probably not design-o-line's responses but the nature of your question. It sounds more or less as if you are looking for someone to design this for you. In fact, the forum functions more as a support for designing it yourself - there are exceptions, and sometimes a challenge will particularly interest one or two people. The forum is not meant to be a design service, but rather to discuss issues and problems, and often principles, of landscape design. If you have no issues, no complicated objectives that you can't see your way clear to, then very few people will see much scope for discussion. Finally, landscaping is done not only for places, but for people. Three consecutive owners of this house might have three completely different ideas of what the right landscape solution is. That will depend not only what their vision is, but also what their capability is to design a space, select plants, and build, tend, and maintain what they envision. And in fact, you've somewhat shared what your vision is, and if all that is left is the plant selection, you don't really need the forum anyway. What you need is spending time at your local nurseries seeing what is available and learning about it. And maybe, figuring out where you will put a fence to dissuade the deer :-) If you are not sure what you want, other landscaping resources besides this forum may be much better for you, such as books and magazines (buy used, the principles don't change) because they present the material in a logical and often seasonal format. Karin L

Thanks for all the input. In to answer some questions that have been posed I will go into a little more history. I bought the tractor used in 2008. I had no problems until spring of 2010 when I was mowing grass that was about a foot high and the belt broke. The dealer thought the high grass not fully discharging built up until it broke the belt. He replaced it with the non spec belt because he said it fit better on my tractor. That belt lasted about 4 hours of mowing and broke when I was mowing normal height grass. I looked up the specs and got him to put on the correct belt which lasted about 2 hours of mowing and broke in the spring of 2011. As I recall the dealer found the pulley on top of the spindle had some bad bearings and replace the pulley and the spindle and the belt, but because of the drought I did very little mowing over the summer - maybe one in half or two hours. In November, 2011, as I was doing the last mowing for the year the belt broke. The dealer went through the system said he could find nothing wrong and replaced the belt. I completed the mowing and started keeping a record of how long I actually mowed. So in November I mowed 32 min on the belt and then when I went to do my first mowing of the year I mowed 10 min before it broke. Again the dealer has replaced it and found nothing wrong. He and I mowed an area next to the dealer and he observed my technique and the tractor performed flawlessly. I brought it home and completed the first mowing, so I have a little over an hour on this belt. I have my fingers crossed. Based on what I can see in the Cub literature I tend to think the twist does not matter on this mower. From what has been said here, about the only thing that would roll the belt is it catching on something or the tension on the spring being too light. Am I correct?

well, lessee how this looks: "30.8. Slip the crankshaft pulley down far enough to get the belt off of the pulley, and remove the belt from the crankshaft. See Figure 30.8. NOTE: Belt keepers that are part of the tractor frame prevent the belt from being removed without lowering the pulley. NOTE: The pulley may be removed from the crankshaft at the discretion of the technician." That's right out of the 1000-1500 series serv manual.... and I don't really know if there is enuff room to lift thet engine straight up with the ground drive pulley in place to be able to wangle the ground drive belt off past those fixed keepers - which I fully agree are something of a PITA. just saying... MHO.

My nylon netting is on its second season after a nasty winter including a couple of ice storms (one of which did severe damage to trees in my neighborhood). My nylon netting looks and feels like it is in the same shape it was in when I put it up last spring. Soon my tomatoes will be testing it.