Garden -- groom your lawn

In my town, we're close to a drought. Rainfall is little and not very often.

My grass is dormant. I refuse to torment it by mowing it. If you are in this situation and still mowing, you are creating future bare spots. Stop it.

Meanwhile, you still have to groom. Not forget-me-not. Leave it there for ground cover.

What you can't leave alone are seedling trees and Rose of Sharon. Get up early before it gets hot, take a bottle of water and ice with you, and go over the whole lawn looking for little non-grass things. (If you have violets, leave them there. They are pretty, they are edible for humans, and they feed fritillary butterfly caterpillars.)

Pull up the seedlings. This is especially important with redbud and Rose of Sharon. Once a Rose seedling gets more than 6 inches tall, you will have to dig out the roots. Before that point, you can pull them out by hand. Trash them.

If you actually have Rose of Sharon growing in your landscaping, groom around them and pick up those fallen flower pods. Those are future seedlings -- many many of them -- and you also have to trash the pods.

Also those pretty white flowers on the vines -- look up photos of bindweed or ranunculus. That's what you have. They are a kind of morning glory and they will take over unless you keep after them. Pull them up and trash them. Same for Virginia creeper which will try to grow along your walls, and woodbine which will grow up through your hedges.

And weeds. Every year there seems to be a different weed trying to dominate my yard. Last year it was chickweed. This year it's sourgrass, that fake clover that has yellow flowers. I compost that.

My other project this year is this. Last year we had record rainfall and it was all I could do to keep up with the grass. I let English ivy and periwinkle get out of control. So far this year I have sent out about 15 of those tall yard waste bags full of vines and even roots that I have pulled up. I cleared several inches at the edges of my grassplot and next to a city sidewalk, and now I'm going for total clearance.

The one thing I am NOT doing is pruning. That's for winter. Pruning now will get rid of your azalea buds, the euonymus berries that the birds want for food this winter, and will only produce new growth on your privet. Leave the azalea alone until right after the blooms fall next year. Prune the euonymus when the berries are gone, and the privet between mid-January and the end of March.

This is all great exercise, which I need a lot. My brother even noticed that I had lost weight after about three months of it. And I only did 15-30 minutes of work a day.

Try it.