I love lawns. I’m never going to one of those people who turn their entire yard into an edible garden or fill the space with paths and shrubs.  I need room to throw frisbees for my dogs.  I like a long view. That said, I don’t care a whit about a uniformly green lawn. Boring. Besides, to get that sort of thing requires an excessive use of water and chemicals.

Although I don’t want a golf-course green in my backyard, I don’t like crabgrass, and dandelions are pretty only briefly, then they look big and scraggly the rest of the summer. I can’t use the organic solution to keep these weeds at bay by spreading corn gluten meal  – my dogs and my chickens eat it up. Instead, I go the old-fashioned route of digging them up. It’s a lot of work but it does allow me to leave all sorts of pretty things in the lawn. Like these. (This picture was taken in the shady front lawn.)

The lawn guys are coming to do the first mowing this week. So, these flowers will be gone, but violets are coming up, and in a few weeks the clover will bloom. The lawn will change over the course of the summer, and go a tad brown during the heat of August. Not perfect, but just right.