The mushrooms are normal in normal, healthy soil. You don't have to pick them, because there are hundreds of millions more fungi in every few cc's of soil. You don't want to get rid of the soil fungi. You want them to be healthy. Healthy means normal and normal means no disease. You can be sure your soil is normal and healthy by applying organic fertilizer 3x per year. And as for organic fertilizer, I have just the thing for you. Alfalfa pellets (rabbit chow). Apply at a rate of 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. With that you should be able to let the tortoise to eat as much as he/she wants. You can fix the bumpy soil by filling the low spots with soil or sand. Also keep your mower at the highest setting. And if Mother Nature is providing at least an inch of rain every 2 weeks, you might not ever have to water the grass. You might need to worry about drainage, however. With hard soil, even when wet, my first thought would be to apply baby shampoo. But with a tortoise, I'm not sure. I don't think the shampoo will hurt the tortoise, especially since you'll be washing it down into the soil. The application rate for shampoo is 100 ml per 100 square meters. Use a shampoo like baby shampoo that you can see through. Don't use one that has conditioners in it. And don't use dish soap because that has anti=bacterial agents in it. Baby shampoo is just a simple formula that seems to work well for softening the soil. It allows the moisture to percolate down deeper into the soil which results in softening it. You might need to reapply in 2 weeks. If that doesn't do it, you can double or triple or quadruple the amount with no problems to the soil. Again, no idea what the tortoise might have to say about it.

Acres, Thank you so much. My envelope smelled like dill when I opened it up this afternoon. I'm ready to make pickles ;) Your swap was well organized and fun to participate in. Thank you too for all the extras. You were very generous...... Bonnie

Prostrate knotweed and spurge are definitely not the same. The knotweed are Polyganum genus. Decent info re Prostrate knotweed: http://tinyurl.com/3lrnuyc There are lots of 'spurges', all Euphorbias, as far as I know. And there are several kinds of sprawling prostrate spurges, in addition to the tall ones I'm familiar with. I don't know what there might be in your area. Re the 'smell' thing on the mystery picture, in your area, I thought is might be some kind of ramp/ramson thing. http://www.forestencyclopedia.net/p/p1912 But then I read that they die back early.... Ok, That's not it. If they are growing now, I'm probably wrong yet again [wry grin]. They are some sort of monocot. but that is like saying they're 'some sort of conifer'. Useless.... If you find out what they are, my curiosity bone would like to know.

If there is much shade the lawn will be poor just because of that. Without taking the source of shade away you will always have this problem. Flowering plants and moss get in where site conditions do not suit complete dominance by grass. Light exposure, soil fertility, soil moisture levels and soil drainage all have an effect.