Well we went to Fleet Farm today and did find some good grass seed for Northern climates. It seems to be a good mixture of mostly perrennial seeds. It was on sale too...clearance. I thank everyone for their good advice, and I think I will go ahead and give it a whirl, and plant it now. I do worry alittle about all the blackbirds, grackles and starlings we have around here ( Prior Lake/ Savage area) but if I must I will stand out there as human scarecrow to scare them away..By the way they have 50 pound bags of Black Oil Sunflowerseeds for the birds for $8.99..a pretty good buy. I make my own birdseed mixture with the blackoil sunflower, safflour seed, peanuts, nut and berry mixture, cracked corn and a few other thigs and the birds love it. ....>^,,^

Snowling, I have a lot of hydrangeas that don't want to bloom this year; it was a very weird winter. Don't give up on them too soon, see how they do next summer. The old reliables are blooming, as is the finnicky 'ayesha' - go figure! There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason, this year, at least, for why some are not producing flowers. It does seem to be the younger ones, a couple of years in place, that are skipping this season altogether. Others are doing much better than expected. Maybe we need a separate thread for this? Anyway, I second greening - Marie's garden is WELL worth visiting. She has a good eye for the possibilities of a site. Now if I could only hire her ... Animal droppings are gross? Hmmm. I guess if you mean a certain class of urban rodents, I'd agree, but otherwise, animals are part of the garden - welcome here if they're not destructive.

Lawn seed needs to be in direct contact with the soil to germinate properly and also for the ability for the roots to grow down deeply. You need to remove the leaves. Also, leaves, acorns or even conifer needles do not make soil acidic. That is a factor of the underlying mineral content of the soil and also to the amount of rainfall, to some degree. You need to test your soil pH before liming to see if necessary. You don't say where you are located but most cool season turf grasses prefer a slightly acidic soil anyway. Liming for these types of lawns is typically not necessary unless the pH is below 5.5.

Don't know much (anything) about it, but if I recall, during a search for sprigging, that seed sale is rare (maybe harvesting issues?) and that it is one of the grasses commonly planted by sprig. Look for a turf farm near you that grows it.