Updates

How's the lawn doing?

Much better! The seeding/overseeding worked well for the most part. There were a few patches that didn't grow as well, but I put down a second round of seed/mulch mix on those. They actually were not as bad as this post-patch photo makes them looks, but they weren't quite even with the rest of the lawn. Plus, the rain has been more frequent lately. This photo was taken in one of the rare instances that the sprinkler is being used.

I'm amazed at the difference in the former dirt patch by the hose:

It looks much, much better now. Hopefully it will stay that way for a while, despite being a high-traffic area.

And now the front lawn has been attacked:

The weeding up front was more work than I anticipated. After removing large patches of weeds, I would end up with uneven ground with more brown than green. This required more patch then I had hoped, but at least the mulch is dyed green to make it look slightly more comforting.

The mulch itself is recycled newspaper. The problem with that is the fibers get into the air very easily with you are trying to spread it out evenly. I ended the morning with every exposed area of skin covered in light green. And I inhaled a good deal of it, so I don't want to think about what my lungs look like (although I got an idea of that, at the risk of oversharing...)

More brief updates:
-No signs of the critter whose hole I found. The hole was filled with rocks, covered with dirt, and now has grass seed sitting on it.

-That strawberry plant Chris posted about? No further signs of life. (Guess who watered it more often.)

-Total number of slugs/snails caught by the beer trap: zero. I turned the soda bottle on its side, and still nothing. Incidentally, Anne, in retrospect having it on its side seems extremely obvious, and I'm embarrassed I didn't realize that! I also tried the beer on a paper plate idea, which grew a lot of mold but caught no invertebrate animals.