Ladies and Gentlemen, I stand before you today to tell you that the state of my yard is strong.  I have finished my initial assault on the dandelions.  I am not, for the time being, worrying about the area behind the garage or the easement between the street and the sidewalk.  But everywhere else has had a pretty thorough initial pass.  From here out I only need to pick any yellow flower I happen to see pop up, so they don't put out seeds.

I did decide to compost what I've pulled.  I think I had three different people say I should try it, so we'll see what happens with that.  I have a pretty good pile started (see the pic at the end). 

I also managed to get the oil changed on the lawn mower and mowed the lawn.  I cut it fairly close the ground, and then raked up the clippings and added them to the compost pile.  There was quite a lot to rake.  With the lawn cut and raked I spread out six pounds of grass seed.  I concentrated on bare patches left from pulling dandelions and other activities, but I also did some general over-seeding as well.  It's supposed to rain tonight and most of the day tomorrow, so I haven't watered the seed yet.

Now I need to think about how to proceed going forward.  I really don't know anything about this, so any suggestions are appreciated.  My current plan is to wait at least three weeks before mowing again, unless I hear some better advice.  The risk there is that the creeping charlie, which the yard has in abundance, will get very large again, but I want to wait so the grass seed can take hold.  Then I'll mow with the deck on the mower set as high as possible, and continue that for a couple weeks before putting it back to the normal position.  I'll also continue to go out each evening and pull any dandelions I see that have flowered, and for the next couple weeks I'll also use the hose to water the seeds if it hasn't rained that day.

Here's a picture of the compost pile.  I'm disappointed in how my cell phone focused, and the picture makes it look much smaller than it really is.