Sounds like you have already prepared them for next year & donnabaskets explained a good method that will work for you if you keep up with the mulch! If annuals are still sold in your area why not purchase some to plant a small area that is visible to you daily. A little bit of color now will reward your hard work & won't be too spendy. Some may even reseed for you. Last night at the grocery store they had some leggy & dried out looking Confetti gallon containers of 3 plants (potunia, calibracha, & bidens or verbena) free 1 per customer. While I was looking for the color tags the nursery person was closing up for the night & said, "If you want, take all of them." When I said okay, he loaded up my cart with the 7 pots. I asked if a clip & water would bring them back & he said feed them, too! So, today I watered, cut them back, & fed them a diluted 20-20-20 mix. Looking closer I could see buds on everything except the petunias. After the grocery store we stopped at Home Dep*t for something my son wanted, so I took a peek at the garden center & found a container of 16 compact & in bloom cells of impatiens for $2.50 probably because the plastic handle was broken. Also saw gallon Confetti series of potunias (mini petunia bicolors) for $2.50 in bloom & looking presentable with no cutting back. A gal had her cart full of them & there were 3 more racks of numerous shelves. Or purchase a trio of perennials that will look good as a combo now until fall. Something showy bloom wise, evergreen foliage & something that trails or spikes or both. You could move them next spring if you'd rather they be placed somewhere else. Sometimes, they're already potted up for you as a porch accent. Keep up with the mulch & pull weed seedlings as they appear.

Hi Xuân, Where in VN do you live? North Central or South? Is that a rose bush I see on the right? Roses and orchids make me think that you are in Ãà -Lạt, are you? Basket hanging may not be very popular in VN and can be hard to water them. I agree with building a window box. Since VN is native to orchids, I'm thinking that you can get some more easily. Place several orchid pots in the window box instead of hanging them. Don't forget to elevate the pots a little so the roots can breath. You can also plant whatever flowers/plants you'd like directly in the window box. In case you're not familiar with a window box. It is an open box made from wood or cast iron. Maybe you or someone can build one for you. You'd want it to be approximately the same length of the window, as wide as you'd like it to be but not so wide that it would block the front porch area. You can have it deep enough to hide the pots. Mount the box in front and below the window. You may want to browse on the internet for some photos and ideas for window box. Another alternative, if you don't want a window box, you may want to place by the window area of the front porch a bench, or a porch swing, or 2 outdoor chairs, a small round table, etc. to fill up that area. Chose a color that pop out since the rest of your home is light in color. You may also want to place a small flower pot on the outdoor table to tie in with your garden. If that is climbing Jasmine in the center, they will grow quite quickly. You may want to extend the trellis for the vine to climb a bit higher but keep it below where the arch starts by trimming the vine. To balance the empty columns on both sides of the Jasmine vine, you may want to hang 2 outdoor lights or simply just hang 2 orchids (like the ones that you have in front of the window): 1 on each side. Again, keep it below where the arch starts. By the way, you have a beautiful home and you've done well with your garden. Happy gardening! Nga

Go outside right now and turn on the water. You should have been watering three times per day and not missing a day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are good times to water. Water for 15 minutes each time. Once the grass has been mowed at your mower's highest setting, start to back off on watering. Ultimately you want to water only once a week in the heat of summer. To do that you will need to water for an hour or so to get enough water deep into the soil. In the summer I water once a week for 1-3 hours per zone. The rest of the time I water every other week. Did you roll the seed down? If not go out and walk on every seed you can see. Don't jump up and down on them, just step on them. They need to have good seed-to-surface contact. Walking on them provides the perfect pressure.

Looks like St Augustine to me, but it could be the altitude and sunnyness of the photo. If you could take a picture in the shade with a dime in the picture and taken from an altitude of 3 inches, I could do better. The bad news is your cookie cutter lawn in Dallas will never look like a colonial estate in Virginia. But you absolutely don't have to have lawn envy. What Scott's will do to your yard will likely not hurt anything. What you do yourself could kill it post haste, and then you could blame it on Scott's. Our issues with national brand lawn services like Scott's is they don't have your best interest at heart. They have boat payments to make all year, so they will continue to bleed your wallet as long as you let them. Also they don't hire lawn experts. They have a training pamphlet of what to tell clients about their lawn. They are not trained to diagnose the lawns, they are only trained what to say. I know because I worked with one of them after he left the job. His own lawn was dead. Anyway, here's what's involved with caring for St Augustine: Water deeply and infrequently. I realized Mother Nature has thrown you a huge curve ball on this for 2015, but the rains will eventually stop. When they do you will be watering once per week but water a full inch at a time. Time how long it takes your sprinkler system to fill several cat food or tuna cans place around the yard. Use that time every time you water. Once per week should be all you need for the summer until it cools off. Then go to once every 2 weeks. The soil surface must dry completely between watering. Mulch mow at your mower's highest setting ALWAYS. Unless this grass is really bermuda, then you will mulch mow at the mower's lowest setting. So it's important to get the grass identified. Assuming it's St Aug, fertilize now with an organic fertilizer like corn meal, corn gluten meal, alfalfa pellets (rabbit chow), cottonseed meal, or Milorganite. The app rate is 15-20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. Apply now and again about Labor Day. You can apply on 4th of July if you want to hit all the holidays. And hit it again around Thanksgiving. That is really all there is to growing grass. The number 1 important thing is deep and infrequent watering. You can mess up any of the rest, but if you get the watering wrong you'll have weeds and other issues that you'll never see if you're doing it right. Sounds simple, huh! It really is. You won't have to reseed anything and should not need herbicide. There is a slight possibility of insect damage even in a healthy lawn, but those are rare enough. I used to have snails, but once I got rid of those and went organic and learned how to water, I have not had any insect issues.