Have you called some one to get some estimates? We live east of Raleigh NC and have an area about the same size in our front yard. We had several estimates from about 2000 to 2500. They were to regrade the slope, fertilize and establish grass. While it is hard to tell from pictures, It looks like you need additional grading to move the water from behind the walled patio to a swale to carry the water from the back yard to the street area

I have KBG. When I get a vole tunnel in the lawn, I walk along the tunnel gently. At the dirt mound area, I try to push back some of the dirt with my foot and make it level and the excess dirt I kick or rake to surrounding lawn to keep it from being a mound. Usually the grass all fills in in a few weeks. I only wish the voles would stay away from the landscaping edging near the house! Rachel

You cannot blame your neighbor for your crabgrass. Crabgrass seed is everywhere, but it only germinates when the environment is right. It was your management that allowed the crabgrass to get started. Every now and then we will get a note here thanking us for the watering and mowing advice which put a dead stop to the neighbor's encroaching crabgrass. If you are doing it right, crabgrass will grow right up to the edge of your lawn and stop. It will stop because your soil is too dry for seed to germinate and because your grass is too dense for the crabgrass to get any light. First of all you need a dense canopy of grass. If you have fescue turf, you should overseed every fall until it is as dense as necessary to keep the crabgrass out. If the Pennington bag has Kentucky bluegrass in it, then the turf can become dense without annual overseeding. Secondly, only seed northern grasses in the fall. Why? Because crabgrass seed only germinates in the spring. If you seed grass in the spring, you will germinate all the crabgrass seed in the process. Also if you seed grass in the spring the summer heat will kill it. Third, do not mow at your mower's lowest setting. If your grass is dense you can mow at the 3-inch level. If it is less dense, then you might raise it up to the mower's highest setting until the grass becomes more dense. That might take years of overseeding if you have only fescue and no Kentucky bluegrass. Fourth, don't fertilize in the early spring. Wait until after the fast flush of spring growth is over. Memorial Day is a good day to shoot for. Once your lawn is established, the watering mantra is deep and infrequent. Deep means one inch all at one time. Infrequent means monthly watering in the cool months and gradually increasing the frequency to weekly in the hottest heat of summer. By allowing the soil surface to dry out completely between watering, the weed seeds cannot germinate. They need to have continual watering to do that. You might have neighbors who water daily for a few minutes. That is exactly wrong for too many reasons to go in to. After you have a few months of deep and infrequent going on, then you can adjust the amount you put down for your situation. Variables include shade, sun, clouds, wind, humidity, soil type and condition, grass type, mowing height, and probably some that don't come to mind right now. You need to measure the output of your sprinklers using a cat food or tuna can. Time how long it takes to fill a few of those cans placed around the yard. My system takes 8 full hour to fill a can but my neighbor's takes only 20 minutes. Every system is different. Another example of different is my house in San Antonio is under a dense canopy of oak trees. With my grass, mowing height, and soil, I can normally water for 3 hours per week in the summer (3/8 inch) but sometimes I have to go to 5 hours. During our driest years I will have to water for 7 hours per week to keep the grass from wilting before the week is up.

My kids have never been injured running around on our moonscape. I don't think you can ever be mole free; if you get rid of one, another one moves in. When you see the mounds, you can spread out the soil so it doesn't leave a hump, but as far as the ground being lumpy from past tunneling, I think about the only thing you can do is till and rake it smooth, but you'd still get moles coming through. Maybe you could shave off the high points left by the mounds of soil they push up to smooth it out a little, but it could be a lot of work. Some people kill off the grubs in the ground that they feed on, but they also feed on worms and I have no idea if the same product kills them also. I wouldn't want to kill off the worms. Good luck!