A tall fescue lawn in a northern California winter is going to look a bit bedraggled, and hardly grow much. The thinning of the grass is probably due to lack of sufficient irrigation suitable for best growth in the hotter months, in combination with insufficient top soil with organic content added before you sodded it, and not fertilizing often enough to encourage better health and growth of grass. How many inches of topsoil did you add before rototilling, and how often and which months do you fertilize, and what is the N-P-K ratio of the fertilizer you are using? As to whether 20 minutes of spray irrigation is sufficient for a lawn in northern California conditions, especially if applied 4 times a week on a flat site, if anything this is overwatering, even with heavy root competition from the redwoods and oaks across the fence. It looks to me that you need to build up soil fertility in both the lawn, and particularly for the citrus tree, which shows signs of nitrogen deficiency in particular, and is probably also not getting water in summer sufficient to get rooting deeper. Just adding a mulch with chicken manure in it, or mushroom compost or similar as a 4 inch mulch, ought to help the citrus tremendously. I'd also suggest adding some time release fertilizer such as osmocote and work into the soil in March, for longer term/slow release of nutrients, and check with a soil auger how deep your irrigation is penetrating with the irrigation you are giving it. The lawn can also be top dressed with a light screened mulch after having it aerated with a core type aerator, and the top dressing raked in to help fill the holes, but it might be better to simply use a sod cutter to skim it all off, add a healthy 6 inches of organic compost to the lawn area, and resod. Lawns here typically benefit from several fertilizing periods, at least once in mid spring and again in summer and early fall, or refer to the web site referred to previously for recommendations. You might also consider using a mulching lawn mower that chops up the grass blades so that they return to the soil, and preserve the nitrogen that is otherwise thrown away with each clipping. As to Ink's complaint about "cliche" eyebrow plantings around the edge of the lawn, I don't think you are really looking at other solutions if you mean to keep the existing lawn size and layout, but I do second Ink's opinion that the narrowness of the planting areas against the fence is rather dull and static. Planting of vines to cover the fence, and widening the borders to allow at least some layering of shrubs and herbaceous plantings is entirely possible if borders were widened to minimum 4 to 8 feet wide if you can give up some lawn space. The proximity of those large redwoods and oaks across your fence is definitely tapping into the irrigation you are supplying. The vigor of the trees, and even some of the plants in your own backyard indicates to me that yours isn't so much a soil fertility problem, as it is poorly timed fertilizing and no ongoing attempts to increase organic content of your clay soils via mulching with compost, as well as not checking to see if your irrigation schedule is adequately wetting the soil to sufficient depth to encourage better growth and plant health under drought/heat stress of summer. Having dealt with many California gardens under or adjacent to redwoods and live oaks, the soil ph is unlikely to be the problem, as I am willing to bet your soil is only mildly acidic or even close to neutral. We just don't have moist enough conditions year round to create acidic soils from dropped leaves in a suburban garden setting. The problem is the root competition of water, and any plantings you add will greatly benefit from adding tons of organic component, mulching with compost on a yearly basis, selecting plants that tolerate root competition with redwood tree roots, shade and constant debris, and closely monitoring your irrigation cycles to see that the plants are getting what they need. Beyond a soils test and a landscape design, you need some help from a good horticulturist who can advise you what you are doing wrong/right in your particular circumstances. I'd also make darn sure the natives you have on your plans are compatible with redwood tree competition, as well as potential overspray from the lawn irrigation. Fertilizing more frequently for plantings below/adjacent redwoods is extremely helpful, and if you prefer the organic route, stick with a good organic mulch that has some manure in it, and reapply a couple of inches every year.

Bob, how did you happen to know about this website the day after it was created? What a coincidence that the company's website was created one day and then you sign up for Gardenweb the very next day and make a post with a link to the site. Maybe I could be wrong, but I smell SPAM and it stinks! Makes me seriously question the ethics of this company you seem to be pushing.

Personally, I really dislike those garbage to energy incinerators. It sounds smart, but it doesn't seem to work so well. Generally the things consume vast quantities of waste, and much of what they require to burn well is plastic and paper, things which are normally recyclable, but when the local council have to feed their waste to energy plant there's little incentive to promote recycling. If they were to achieve any successful levels of recycling the plant's fuel supply would dry up and the little remaining would be mostly comprised of random inflamable materials such as used electrical goods. You'll notice when looking at recycling statistics that areas with these plants have little or no recycling provision. These plants are just turning valuable raw materials like paper and plastic that can be used again and again in to a pile of toxic ash, thus we must chop down more trees and pump up more oil, all with various environmental and energy costs to replace what has been incinerated. Plus, the toxic ash still has to be disposed of, although I also dislike the term 'disposed' as really nothing is disposed of, rather it's dumped in to the environment. Landfills are the global equivalent of dumping our weekly rubbish in to a pit in the back garden and pretending it's vanished. It's not gone, it's in the way polluting the environment and costing us tax money to maintain the site. The only sustainable option is to keep reusing materials so that they're never landfilled. I really do believe that a closed cycle for almost all, if not 100% of consumer waste is possible. If packaging was limited to just glass, paper, metal and polyethylene (it's 100% recyclable with no loss of quality, unlike other plastics) then we could recycle just about everything. More re-usable containers would help as well, rather than the use once packaging everything seems to be provided in. If companies passed on some of their savings to consumers who bought back their containers for re-filling, then I'm sure it would become a common way to save money at the store. Equally importantly, I believe that large scale re-using of packaging would save vast amounts of energy, plus recycling where needed tends to use far less energy as the materials are allready refined and processed. I'm convinced that the end energy savings would far surpass the energy extracted from incincerating all waste in one of these plants. Waste to energy isn't a good solution to the mountain of waste we produce, places like germany are now averaging around 80% recycling, and potentially the percentage could be higher if the materials used in packaging were better regulated for recyclable content.

. Joel . . Right around 30 . . . This is for a 2.8 kWh system, the whole shooting match including back-up batteries, and installation. Throw in incentives / tax credits; you're about 20 or so. I did not do it for financial reasons; and right now as a strictly financial decision it doesn't fly. I'm doing a good thing for everyone first of all. Secondly, in power faliures I will not have one . . . . and in fact will not even know it. The money I get from selling back to the grid will help offset the basic monthly charges you pay JUST to be connected. As laws change, and prices go up; it will be increasingly closer to being a viable financial decision. There are other parts of the world; and I believe the state of Maine; which currently require that juice generated by people like me will be reimbursed at MORE than going rates; instead of a fraction thereof. This is due to it being considered "green" power. . . . again; legislation can make a huge difference . . . . Bottom line: It is NOT currently a viable financial choice unless you are building somewhere that you have to run power lines / poles to get to. It WILL be so in the future . . . when will that be ? Dunno . . . . how fast will energy prices rise, legislation go through, supply of PV panels ease up ? . .. . . Bob