That's what I meant about not enough information --may lead to a host of recommendations, which could be appropriate and inappropriate. Arugula, I suppose I don't know for sure whether your desire to replace lawn is enthusiastic but somewhat naive (at this point) or that of someone who really knows his site, climate, size and condition of space to be planted, f/u maintenance, and can end up with a marvelous lawn alternative (along with that, need to know the various lawn grasses for your area, in that lawn grasses can't all be lumped as higher maintenance, as noted by gottagarden). But your posts sound more like you're just starting to learn about groundcovers and growth habits. So I'd just be cautious about jumping in with a lawn-eradication plan based on what you learn from a few posts here. BTW, replacing lawn with groundcover or other plantings in not naive or wrong in itself at all--it's just that it can be a lot harder to "get it right" than a simple lawn, and so need to go at it--planning, installing, and maintaining-- with more knowledge than a grass-owner may need to know. Plus, there is a lot of "hype" out there currently--magazines go blah blah blah--about how John or Susie replaced all their awful front grass "so we don't have to mow". Most of these spreads are extremely high maintenance. Some of the western/desert xeriscaping, however, is really cool and low-maintenance. Anyway, the hype has led to a lot of posts from beginning gardeners about how they want to go do that tomorrow, all by themselves--hence my being a bit on the alert. So without photos of the area you have in mind, or hearing more experience in your posts, I just think that you may either need some professional on-site input about what are the best options, or may need to do some more legwork yourself. Typical actions that can help are: reading up more on growing conditions, groundcovers, xeriscaping; driving around your area to see if anyone has planted anything remotely like what you're contemplating (obviously, sometimes you can't find it because no one else is brave enough to do something different, but sometimes it's because it isn't that practical), look on the internet and in books for info and photos on groundcovers, lawn-free yards, and so on. If I've misread the situation and/or made things sound overcomplicated (I do tend to be cautious and detailed), then please forgive.

There are many species of Epilobium, some of which have had name changes, like the fireweed. Some are native, some are introduced weeds. There's only one fireweed though, by whatever name. Watson's willowherb is a common garden weed, I think it's Epilobium ciliatum now, used to be Epilobium watsonii. Dry or damp, sun or shade, tall and rank or short and sparse. Seeds, no runners. The one in your garden is probably the Watson's although you may also have others like Epilobium minutum in dry spots. I'm sure bboy is much more knowledgeable about the various species than I am, I usually do well enough just going by 'Epilobium species'. What you have in the photos on the Weeds forum sure look like Watson's willowherb gone to seed. They've done really well this year with the cool damp spring. But the photos do need to be larger to really see. I'm just guessing from the silhouette.

Purple & Linda, Thanks for the commisserating with the dental thing. I had to go back to him again because of problems and also to the doctor. It's been an "interesting" few days lately. Sheesh. Well, regarding the weed situation, I broke down and sprayed the Canada thistle. Dang, I hope I'll be forgiven someday for doing detrimental things to the environment. I hope my recycling for 20 some years kind of makes up for that. I'm just afraid that by pulling, I'm going to make it worse, and besides, for me to get around to taking the time to pull all of those out, the thistles will only keep getting worse because I know that I wouldn't get around to pulling them as often as should be done if that is a viable solution (the pulling thing). If I wouldn't have so much garden space to take care of, it would be another story, but I try to provide for lots of butterflies. So being that I know I'd get around to spraying them more often than pulling (since it takes less time), I am going to spray them. I'd use the brush method but the bending over would kill my back, and it would be too much to scoot along on the ground doing all of them. So I'm just going to have to hope that the spraying does them in. If not, I guess I'll have to give up on that garden and plant it in grass and keep it mowed. The thing is, by tilling it before sowing grass seed we'd be spreading the roots around making more thistle plants unless it wouldn't matter anyway because it would all get mowed. Regarding the passionvine, I stuffed some of the vines in 2 empty coffee cans (they're plastic) and poured the glyphosate solution in according to Bry's instructions in that thread (thanks again for pointing me to that...I read through the entire thread). It makes sense to me to do it that way...now if only there were a way to stuff Canada thistle in cans...lol. Either today or tomorrow I want to gather up some more vines to stuff in cans and give them a slow glyphosate poisoning like the others. I have so many little sprigs coming up that I don't really know if I should wait until the real small ones get bigger to stuff in with some bigger vines that aren't stuffed yet or just spray the very little ones the way a person would normally spray glyphosate or just let them go. I imagine that Bry didn't gather up every last bindweed vine that he had, so I'm thinking that maybe it's not necessary to stuff every last one into the glyphosated cans. I'm thinking that the ones that are stuffed in cans are slowly getting down into the root system, killing the plant, thus eventually killing the small sprigs that are just now coming up or are only a few inches long. It makes sense to me, but I have no way of knowing if that's right or not. I'm not really sure what to do with the ones in the grass either. I could either just keep mowing them down or spray them with lawn weed killer, although I don't have any and would have to go buy some. I'm not a big person on spraying, but these two weeds have got to go. Well, I don't know if passionvine would be considered a weed or not because it's a host plant for some butterflies, but the only one of them that I get around here is the Variegated Fritillary and even then not every year. I never found a caterpillar on the passionvine, so I'm guessing that they eat the violets here. I love the flowers that the vine gets, but I don't need any more things popping up all over the place to pull out. I've been working on another weed here in my garden that's right behind our house (thus, I try to keep this garden the best looking since it's the one we see the most). I had gotten a lot of bricks free from a couple of people and have put in several small garden paths with them. There is a whole lot of garlic growing in the back of the garden right now and it's a VERY tedious job digging it out bulb by bulb (there are thousands of them), but if I don't do it, I fear it will just get worse and worse. Right now I'm digging them out of an area that was actually lawn (if you'd actually call it that...our lawn is more weeds than grass) and I'm turning into garden. This path is part of what was the "lawn", and then directly behind that is about a 3-ft wide (and about 20 feet long) area that I want to put my tropical milkweed in. The area isn't nearly as big as the milkweed patch where I didn't want to put the milkweed because of that #@*^ thistle coming up, so I'm trying to put it where I can find space here and there. As I'm digging out the garlic, I'm sitting in the path (right now ground but will be those bricks after I'm done with this digging) digging out the area where the milkweed will be planted, and I really should get moving on that as here it is July! Anyway...new paragraph because the other one is getting long. Ha. I've been meticulously getting out this garlic, digging down at least 4 or 5 inches to try to get almost every one I can find. I know I'll miss some, and at this point I'm getting not to care as much about that because I'm really getting tired of picking out all of these bulbs or whatever you'd call them. Some are white and some are brown. I find some that are easy, maybe close to an inch across; others are almost miniscule. I didn't know another way to get rid of them, and besides, even if there is a way of killing them with chemicals, this way is better for the environment even though I'm spending hours upon hours getting them out of there. As I can see the tremendous amount of time that it's taking, I'd like to just skip doing the path where the bricks will be going to save on time because other things are getting neglected (other weeding, watering, house stuff, etc.) because this garlic digging is taking up almost all of my time (and killing my back in the process). Okay, after that long explanation....my question is...Do you think that the garlic under the bricks will be able to come up through them? How about if I put newspapers under the bricks before laying them down? I'd hate to put that path in and then find out in the spring that I have to take them all out to dig up that garlic too! I've been butterfly gardening since 2005 and since I'm no young chick anymore, it's wearing me out. I really like doing it though. It's just that I wish that the weeds wouldn't be quite so persistant as they are. I weeded the pussytoe bed about a month ago and it looks worse now than it ever did. The one-foot poplar tree that I was going to dig out of there is now at least 3 feet high already! I have various kinds of plants that I was going to plant that I don't have space or time for now and if I can't find a home for them on the giveaway/trade forum, I guess I'll have to dump them, but such is life. Oh, and I was going to say that being that I carpeted some places in the gardens, I've given a whole new meaning to "indoor/outdoor carpeting". HA!! Thanks bunches for your help, and sorry this got so long! Cathy

I'd say narrow leafed plantain.