DAVENPORT RIM LANDSCAPING CONTRACT AND DROUGHT UPDATE

Neighbors – the rain we had two nights ago was really helpful, but forecasters are predicting at least 2-3 more weeks of unusually hot weather without much chance for more rain. Yellowstone Landscaping is immediately changing our maintenance schedule from Fridays to Thursdays.  This is actually better, since the Friday trash bin pickup will no longer interfere with their work. We have one more every-other-week unit maintenance time scheduled in July.  The good news is that our new 2022-2023 Yellowstone landscape contract resumes on August 1.  Beginning on August 4 we will have full lawn maintenance (mowing, trimming, blowing), tree and shrub pruning, etc. weekly.  Due to the total number of contracted maintenance days (42 per year), there will be some skip-weeks. Missing from our new landscaping contract are front lawn fertilizer applications and mulching.  Homeowners have complained about landscapers “killing their lawns with fertilizer”, and mulching all units, as we tried last year, is simply too expensive.  Owners will thus have to fertilize and mulch their own front lawns as they have in the past. Tree trimming (up to 8 feet from the ground) will occur once a month and front yard shrub trimming will also be monthly.  (Note that the company will trim ¼ of the unit properties each week so that the neighborhood trimming is completed over a 4-week period.) Our once-a-week (10-minute) irrigation schedule on Tuesdays, as mandated by the City, is barely holding on. Some of our entrance flowers have already died, even with extra drip-system watering.  We are hearing reports of other nearby communities that are down to every-other-week irrigation, or (in one case) 6 minutes/week.  Yellowstone is reporting that some of their properties have all-yellow grass, and so we are in better shape than most of their other properties.  However, we can’t predict whether the City of Austin will reduce our irrigation schedules even further as the drought continues, so we are again letting our owners know that hand-watering to keep your flowers, plants, grass, and even trees alive is all we can do at this point. As can be seen around the neighborhood, hand-watering is working – they are the ones with grass (front and/or backyard) that is still green. Thanks for all you do to keep Davenport Rim an attractive and livable community.   The Board appreciates your understanding and patience!