NOW IS THE TIME. Do not wait until spring. If you wait until spring you will be replanting the weeds. Start by fertilizing lightly. If you use chemical fertilizers, then wait until after the summer heat breaks to fertilize. If you are using organic fertilizers, you can fertilize any time. Then two weeks later, spot spray with Weed-B-Gone spray (or a similar product) and only spray on the weeds. NEVER use Round-up unless you want to renovate your entire lawn. You might need to reapply the Weed-B-Gone a week later. Why? Because sometimes a plant will be in a sprouting stage and the WBG is only taken up by leaves. Weed-B-Gone will do nothing to the crabgrass. Crabgrass is an annual plant and will completely die out when the weather cools off. If you want to try to get rid of it, one way that I see here is to use a power rake and take all the grass away down to 1/8 inch below the surface. Then immediately seed some new grass. Since your grass is already a mix, you should stick with a mix. You didn't say where you live (a minor infraction, but it's important), but since you are in Zone 9, you probably have warm season grass like bermuda or St Augustine. What matters more is which grass you want to end up with. Can't tell you what to do for the long haul without knowing that.

I would consider African violets, hypoestes and spider plants rainforest and basil and parsley are herbs best grown outdoors in full sun...

Truzella: I have a Craftsman corded electric trimmer/edger/trencher. The head can be pivoted to function as a trimmer or edger. In the edger position it can be set at a slight cant to dig a shallow trench. In the edger and trencher position it absolutely takes the grass out when edging, but a very narrow strip. As a shallow trencher, it tears out the grass when you have it trenching with a hard surface facing the blade, but just makes an angled slot when you have a soft surface on both sides of the blade. Sorry to hear your Mantis is not giving you the desired results. Fairyprincess

Great package! When I clicked on the pictures I immediately went to the picture of the tart. I thought, wow, she received a tart pan in the swap and to show off the pan, baked a tart before taking pictures. :) Love the slate cheese board. I saw some similar in my swap shopping adventures and it was one of the things I almost bought for myself. Isn't it funny to see all the goodies everyone receives and see a few things that a) you did buy for yourself or b) almost bought for yourself. :) Tracey - love the wine and cheese theme. Peppi, enjoy your boxes of goodies.