I agree with some of the others..You have lots of potential there but if it were me, I'd start out making the front flower bed first. It's what you and all your neighbors and passer-bys see. They don't see behind that fenced area. Save those areas for last. Sit down and decide what colors you like best. Do you have any favorite flowers? I would start out with flowers that perennials in the back of the bed. These come back year after year and you can make more plants but dividing them as they grow and also taking cuttings. Use some container plants near your entrance. By the way, are there some hidden steps to get up on the front porch that we can't see in the pictures? I'm assumming they are hidden and are near the driveway? Since you mention that you are pregnant now, I'd start out with a few container plantings on that porch to give color there. Remember Rome wasn't built in a day..Ask friends or family for cuttings or to save seeds from their plants that you like. I'd stick to flowers that are low maintence and give you color for that front bed. Is there anybody that can help you get started and can do the digging and composting you will need? Does your city offer FREE leaf mulch? Take advantage of that if available or ask neighbors for their leaves. There are a lot of good advice offered here in all the posted messages. Read them all and start yourself a garden journal of helpful hints. All you need is either a 3 ring notebook or what we used to call a composition book with spiral binding. You can pick up 3 ring binders at yardsales for practically nothing. I like to buy the white 3 ring binders at office supply stores where you can insert a colorful page in the front of the book under the plastic sleeve. Invest in some sheet protectors for pictures from magazines that inspire you. Use your public library for ideas, you can even check out gardening magazines for inspiration. Order flower catalogues to give you ideas too. Good Luck! Did you mention the ages of your children? I see the swing set in the back yard so I'm assumming they are under 6 yrs. old?

Thanks! Yes, I believe it is a mophead - what is the scientific name for that variety? I will try what you suggest... However, I noticed that those dormant branches have buds on them. If I put it back in 'cool weather' will it all go dormant until the actual spring (even the new growth)? I thought I'd read on other postings that folks cut the old branches down to the ground during winter? Why is that? And do the blooms only come out on new growth? Was it normal for the flower heads to turn grey/green before they died? (It seemed they were alive for awhile while that color). Also, any advice on planting it in a barrel when I do move it outside? Sorry for all the questions, but I'm new to hydrangea care and I want to do right by my little plant. (Especially since I've already screwed it up once - it'll probably need years of therapy). Thanks for your help! It is greatly appreciated.

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.

Mark- I live in Pacifica. My full time gig is in Menlo Park, but I work all over the area. I get almost all the outdoor wood from Empire Lumber in Belmont. Mike always gives me good prices and the pick of the stack. Hardwood and specialty ply- I buy from Aura in San Jose. You're right about the quality of all Redwood these days, It's nothing like the old growth stuff. I found an old 4x4 Redwood post the other day, and was cutting it for kindling. I couldn't believe the rings! They were too fine to even count. I polished the surface with a razor blade to bring out the grain. Then I got a magnifying glass and started counting. There are about 300 rings on that 4x4! There is a stretch in the middle that appears to represent a drought that lasted for over 100 years, with a pattern of 10 to 20 years of almost no growth interspersed with one or two years of significant growth. What an amazing record of natural history an old redwood tree holds! Compare that to a redwood 4x4 at a box store with only about 10 rings in the cross section. The new Redwood does not have anywhere close to the same rot resistance. The 4x4 with 300 rings will last about 30 times longer without rotting. I think tree farming is a waste of the environment just like cutting old growth. The wood is crap, the habitat is worthless, and the energy used to harvest the wood over and over is a bad deal on the environment. How many acres of tree farmed redwood does it take to equal one old growth tree? The tree farm land will never becaom a mature forest habitat. The 1,000 year old tree has wood that will last for 50 years or more. The tree farmed tree takes 30 years to grow, but the wood only lasts 10 years. I never source wood from Home Depot. Like I mentioned, sometimes I'll get onesies or twosies from the Home Depot Pro in Daly City, if we end up short. Most of the lumber and sheet goods there are a total joke.