That doesn't come as a surprise to Burton Jablin, president and general manager of Knoxville-based Home & Garden Television, which has built a cable network reaching 73 million U.S. households since 1995 based on such insight.

The network conducts an annual Lifestyle Trends Report, a compilation of polling and other research.

``This year, yet again, making love did not come in No. 1 among home enthusiasts,'' Jablin said. ``Working in the yard actually beat having sex.''

Yard work was the most popular answer among home enthusiasts to the HGTV question: Which activities are you most likely to do in your spare time ``for fun and enjoyment''?

Forty-one percent gave a green thumbs-up to mowing the lawn. Sex was second at 37 percent, followed by gardening at 34 percent and redecorating, 23 percent.

``When we look at the rest of the survey and at other research that we do for HGTV, what we find is that people really get a great deal of personal satisfaction out of what they do around the house. So that is really what is at work here,'' Jablin said.

The report was prepared by Yankelovich Partners Inc., a North Carolina-based marketing research firm. The company relied on a nationwide telephone survey of 1,414 adults in January, in-home interviews with 2,500 adults between January and April, and U.S. Census data.

Go back home!