It gets worse before it gets better right?

On the areas we've roundup and spot-seeded we
made sure to put down straw to retain moisture.

So now that we've destroyed the yard killing weeds with round-up, its time to start fixing it.  So far we have overseeded with a nice Kentucky bluegrass (midnight), as well as spot seeding the area's we've Round-upped with a mixed store bought Scott's random junk.  Our plan is to bring the yard to an "acceptable" level this summer, then in the fall we'll kill all the weeds with a 2,4d herbicide, wait a few weeks for it to clear, then overseed the entire lawn with a mix of specialized breeds of Kentucky bluegrass I've selected using ntep.org's data.  I'll be using blueberry, bewitched, bedazzled, midnight II, and moonlight SLT (I swear they get a 12 year old girl to name these breeds).  According to all the nerdy horticultural articles I've read this should result in "winning" the yard... if not... we'll tap out and hire a professional.

The weed graveyard

In trying to keep the yard not terrible this year, we've been weeding every day after work for about 20 minutes.  Amazingly every single day, there are new dandelions. We came home from work the day after mowing and there were 4" tall weeds. Halley immediately blamed me for "missing" large chunks all over the yard... I meekly suggested that they had grown that fast. We were both wrong. While dandelions do grow fast as hell (I plan on doing a time lapse later to show this) they are also lawn ninjas! They grow a good 4-6 inches horizontally then pop up and attack. We now search very carefully around any dandelion as there are almost always lurkers ready to attack.

We have also cut back the shrubbery around the house a lot.  The bushes are nice and mature, but they were encroaching on the walkway a bit.  They look a bit Dr. Seuss-esque now, but they will come back nicely... we hope :)

I'm not sure if this before/after helps or hurts our case... but here ya go!

Before

After

Last weekend Halley's dad came over to help us remove the stumps left behind by the large bushes out front. We spent a good 2-3 hours making a tiny bit of progress before we tapped out and hired a professional with a stump grinder. $150 later they are gone! :)

Stump grinder.... well worth the money

The nice midnight Kentucky bluegrass we planted last month is finally coming up (this grass takes about a month to germinate) and it looks great!

Very surprised I didnt kill this grass

In keeping with the "outdoor" theme of this post, we recently got a nice teak outdoor patio set in preparation for all our upcoming pool parties :)

Ooooooo, Ahhhhhh

The only things left for our "outdoor" projects this year are a couple of trees even Halley's dad (the lorax) approved removal of, some ground cover we would like to plant, and weeding... much more weeding...