Earwigs, pill bugs, sow bugs, slugs, all of those wee buggers that like cool and moist environments will like any material used for mulch whether compost, straw, grass clippings, shredded leaves, or wood chips. I use what ever I can get the most of for the least cost and for me that is usually tree leaves.

For perennials try Sedum, Yarrow, Purple Coneflower, Black eye susans, Daylillies, Asian lillies, gayfeather, columbines, Tall Bearded Iris, Creeping Phlox. Those are some. remember to give them space because they all spread. All of these guys are heardy and drought tolerant. Don't forget to plant Rosemary, Common Thyme, Lavender, Common Sage. Great herbs to have for cooking except for Lavender of course. You can use that for other things. For annuals check the labels and see what you like. Ornamental grasses, just google it and see what you like. I have some and they grow well with little work. Good luck.

SC77 said the stuff in italics... Core aeration is not just about compaction. It's about getting oxygen to the roots, plus a priceless opportunity to get compost 3-4 inches down into your soil. It takes a lot more time to get OM down to the root level simply by topdressing a lawn, plus you run the risk of losing precious OM through runoff. Core aeration is a poor substitute for having proper fungal mass and thousands of miles of fungal hyphae enmeshed throughout the soil. There's no way you can achieve thousands of miles of core removal from a typical lawn, but a good fungal colony can do that in a week. OM doesn't run off. OM is sugars, living roots and microbes, and dead roots and microbes. They don't flow away, they live there or are stuck there. Sugars don't flow away because, as Dr Ingham said, they are only released from the plant roots in dosages needed to control the soil microbes. Compost - I have to challenge you on the importance of compost as well. I don't think it can simply be replaced by using organic fertilizer. The two play very specific and separate roles in organic lawn care. Maybe, in a very well established, mature organic lawn, one could get away with simply adding fertlizer such as alfalfa, sbm, or cgm, but in those of us that are still building up our OM %, compost is priceless. "The soil must first be alive in order for fertilizers to function well" -Paul Tukey (The Organic Lawn Care Manual). I agree there are two different functions for compost and organic fertilizer. Compost supplies microbes. Organic fertilizer provides protein...and lesser foodstuffs. What we might disagree on beyond that is how long it takes for organic fertilizer to build the population of microbes that were thought to be missing. If the microbe population is teensy, it might take longer for the fertilizer to work. But if I can apply 10 apps of fertilizer for the cost of compost, that's what I'll do. Fertilizer seems to work in 3 weeks. The use of compost is fraught with peril in that even a normal application of 1/4 inch can set a lawn back for a full season. Why? Because getting an even 1/4-inch seems to be impossible. Some places will have none and some will have 3/4 inch. Where there is 3/4 inches, the grass likely will die from being smothered. Sure it can be done, but we try to deal in practicalities. Every single year for the past 20 I have seen lawns killed or nearly killed by compost. I've never seen any lawn even slightly tainted by using too much organic fertilizer. ...price [of compost] doesn't have to be a problem. I further agree that price does not have to be a problem. My property in San Antonio is completely covered with trees and that is not enough to make a decent compost pile. I collect leaves set out by the curb to make a pile. With 20 large bags of leaves I make enough compost to treat our garden beds, about 1,000 square feet. I have seen you question Tukey's advice, but he is far from the only one suggesting that the addition of compost be at the core of every organic lawn program. Compost improves soil structure, adds microorganisms, balances pH, feeds existing soil life, and adds around 1% nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. 5% is the optimal amount of OM, which takes a long time to achieve anything beyond that is just gravy and won't hurt the lawn, only improve it. Tukey is an organic gardener in the tradition of Rodale. Without rereading anything of his, I would suggest that if he is a disciple of Dr Ingham, it is only inasmuch as she is a proponent of compost and not to the extension of the value of microbes feeding directly on protein dropped on top of the soil. If you want to rapidly improve the OM in your soil, you need to talk to morpheusPA. He has a few recent posts on this forum, but he has thousands of posts on another forum, and more recently has branched off into his own blog. He boosted the OM on his lot by several percent in one season by using zero pounds of compost but thousands of pounds of organic fertilizer. That was the nutritional equivalent of 2 cubic yards of compost applied every weekend all season long. There is no way to do that with compost in a practical or economic manner. It was more of an experiment, but it really, REALLY worked! So the idea that is takes a long time to improve the OM percentage is simply false. If you use the wrong materials, like compost, then yes, it takes a long time. Something you missed in the interview with Dr Ingham was the references to feeding the compost before using it. She didn't mention what she feeds it with, but I have talked to another of her disciples who uses a dose of oatmeal to feed her compost prior to converting it into compost tea. In other words, she recommends feeding it a protein filled organic fertilizer. Well, if you're going to feed the compost before applying it, then why not just feed the soil directly? After seeing this post I am further confused. You said you learned what you know from Dr. Ingham, but she is a HUGE proponent of the benefits of compost and compost tea. Tukey and Todd Harrington are both disciples of Dr. Ingham and they all agree on the importance of Compost and Core Aeration. Harrington has the largest residential and commercial base of organic lawns at over 2000 and is considered to be the forerunner in the industry. Dr Ingham is absolutely the premier leader in the compost tea movement. Great compost tea is a function of starting with great compost and following a critical set of rules for making the tea. One of those rules which is rarely mentioned is the water temperature. The problem cropped up with a critic of hers in Phoenix who ended up making worthless tea in the Arizona heat. Ingham called it, essentially, a rookie mistake by the Phoenix researcher. Aerobic microbes cannot live without air and water above 80 degrees F barely holds enough air for normal aerobic life. Trying to make compost tea above 80 degrees is a fool's errand because you have a concentrated population of microbes along with plenty of food. Once the air is depleted (immediately!), the aerobic microbes die and the tea is taken over by anaerobic microbes. But Dr Ingham does not mention this fact in the general guidance about making tea. Essentially this factoid limits the making of compost tea to a "non-summer" activity. You really want water between 50 degrees and 70 degrees for best tea performance. So I wish she was more up front about that aspect of tea making. I have seen so-called professional tea makers running their equipment all summer long and selling compost tea which is microbially worthless. Harrington is selling products and services. The profitability of aeration and the application of compost is through the roof. He'd be an idiot if he didn't promote the heck out of these services. And there is the authoritative Rodale history over the past 80 years. Everyone knows compost has to be an integral part of a conscientiously applied organic lawn care program. Everyone knows that except me. I believe any improvement following the use of compost to be coincidental with the increased emphasis and attention paid to the land where the compost was applied. I do believe there is a beneficial "micro mulching" effect, but not much else. In the article you referenced, Dr Ingham says, "Compost is the mix of plant materials." Even if you read the rest of the context, she never gets more explanatory. Compost is a mix of decomposed plant AND ANIMAL materials. How decomposed is it? Pretty darned decomposed. In fact I refer to it as a pile of depleted fertilizer materials. The stuff going in may have been weak in the protein department, but it is definitely weak in the protein department following months of aerobic decomposition. I might also mention that Dr Ingham has profitable products and services to sell. Part of the problem is, since the 1990s when all these hundred thousand species of soil microbes were discovered, there hasn't been enough time to run proper studies of the effects of the various foodstuffs in improving the soil. The foodstuffs used for the popular organic fertilizers include human waste (such as Milorganite and Hou-actinite), soybean meal, cottonseed meal, corn meal, corn gluten meal, flax meal, used coffee grounds, alfalfa pellets, feather meal, hydrolyzed feather meal, blood meal, kelp meal, and poultry litter. All of these materials work stupendously well by themselves to improve the color, density, and growth of grass. So why would anyone waste the energy to run peer reviewed tests? Where is the profit in the results beyond what we in the trenches already know? If I can summarize: Compost is too depleted of protein to be of much value as a fertilizer Any organic fertilizer is much better than any compost, unless the compost was fortified with organic fertilizer Soil microbes are more resilient than people give them credit for. And I know some very smart folks who disagree with me on this. We'll never know until the research is done. Aeration is a poor substitute for fungal mass and miles of hyphae in the soil.

Thank you so much, junco! Yes, those are hostas - now that I googled the name. :-) I wish I knew that much. They too look a bit scorched so perhaps they are all showing the effects of a hot summer when nobody bothered to water them. Hopefully they will come back OK next spring. It is really helpful to know that it is fine to wait and see what happens next Spring. If the plants come back fine in the Spring, do you have any tips for maximizing bloom? I don't think they bloomed at all last year either. Unfortunately, I don't have an irrigation system in that area but i do have a hose on the deck so I will just have to pay attention to the weather and water as needed, which should be a major improvement from "never". Trouble is if we are gone again to stay with family overseas, I will have to entrust someone with watering the garden at least once in a while. Will also do the weed pulling by hand - myself. I can certainly take 2 hours. That small fern that shows up in the picture...I am pretty sure it was not designed to be there. :-) I love big hydrangea bushes and have always wondered how some get so big, These two plants we have never grew beyond their initial size - which is not very large. Thank you so much!