If you are looking for calendar dates for doing things, there are a few we use in lawn care. The PNW seems to be its own animal, though. Generally I would say to not fertilize most all grass until late May. Memorial Day is an easy day to remember. Bermuda is an exception to that because it can use nitrogen all through the growing season. Fertilize most grasses again around Labor Day, and again around Thanksgiving. Spot spray weeds in mid April and again in mid Sept. If you want to seed most northern grasses in most places, wait until late summer after the main heat has broken. For the PNW it seems y'all can seed also in the spring without the threat of crabgrass or summer heat wiping out your hard work. There are no specific dates for seeding.

So our springs starts much earlier I think. Unlikely to be frosty after March. What about aerating and lime and over seeding etc

Aerating: If you must (and you shouldn't have to) either mid-spring (April) or early fall (September). By which I mean what you guys call spring and fall. Aeration shouldn't be something that's routinely required in the well-maintained lawn.

Lime: Never without a soil test.

Overseeding: Even for you, that's a mid-August thing for northern grasses, and a May to early July thing for southern grasses, depending on what you use and where you are. While spring seeding can work a bit better for you guys than in some other places in terms of northern grasses, it's still not recommended.

Sodding or Patching: Any time except winter or the middle of summer. You can even do it in summer if you can keep it damp enough, but it's much harder then.

Weeds: I'll slightly disagree with David in that if you see a weed during the growing season, you can spot spray it at that point, it's not on a set schedule. But if you want to make regular rounds on that schedule to search for weeds, it's a good time to do so.

We have tons of moss. Lime is commonly suggested here and was when we first got lawn.

Why do you say no aerating? I know this is a hot button topic. Some say yes and others no.

Our yard is very wet. We will actually be working on improving drainage before we do maintenance.

Moss actually doesn't care about lime one way or the other. Although liming may temporarily kill it, it'll be back. The same way iron will temporarily kill it...but it'll be back.

The way to get rid of moss is to strengthen the lawn to get rid of it, or improve the drainage in the area to remove excess water.

Some will disagree on aeration. Those people are wrong. :-) Just kidding, but although it has its uses for when equipment has driven across a lawn, or post a flooding event, for the most part the biology of your lawn should be doing the aeration on its own. If it isn't, improve the biology. Improving the soil biology will also help with your drainage issue above, so that helps, too.

There are ways to do that that are pretty simple. First, a soil test. Time was, I read them here but times change and events happen and I don't bother any longer. I do recommend Logan Labs overall as an excellent source, and there are...places...online to get them read for free and where I do read them. Proper resource balance will assure that your lawn and other critters have what they need to flourish.

Second, feed organically when and where possible, to the extent possible. Fungi and bacteria do a ton of work of aerating your soil (not that worms aren't important, but they need something to feed on), and provide the base for everything else to eat.

And third, check using soap on your lawn and soil. It sound nuts, but works.

Okay sounds like step one is tackle the drainage woes and go from there. We have someone who will come in early spring and do some trenches and add an extra pipe to our rock pit outflow and hopefully just lower the water table on the lawn a bit so we can get more out of it. We back onto a creek and knew this would be a concern.

We also have tons of these weeds. Can just see where garden and grass should be meeting. Any ideas? And here is the whole yard

It's not that bad, really. Just about average for a lawn that hasn't seen hobbyist-level maintenance. We've seen way worse.

First, what kind of lawn is it? Care is really going to differ between northern and southern, and it's impossible to tell from a distance shot (although if that was just taken right now, it's a northern lawn; southern lawns would be brown where you are in January with temperatures, as reported, hovering around frosty).

I took this yesterday. So I’m guessing northern lawn? Yes temp is mildly frosty.

Getting the drainage right is always step 1. Keep in mind that a landscaper looking at your drainage might suggest removing soil to get it right. After that you can deal with redoing the turf and weeding. Weeds will be the least of your problems if you do this...after the soil is graded for drainage, start watering 2x to 3x every day for 5 minutes to moisten the surface of the soil. Do that for a week and that will sprout tons of weed seeds. After a week, spray all the newly sprouted weeds with RoundUp. Continue watering daily as before for another week to catch the slow germinating weeds. Spot spray those with RoundUp and you are ready for new sod or seed. There should be very few to no weeds coming up for months to come.

Also, when it is not raining, do you have a watering schedule you normally revert to? Do you water daily, semi-daily, weekly, etc., and for how long do you water when you water?

I'm looking at the big picture picture and wondering what the yellowed spots are. What do you think is happening there? Different kind of grass, maybe? Or do you have dogs? Sometimes people try to patch spots where the grass suffered by overseeding and use a different grass seed than was use for the original lawn.

This is only a three year old lawn. It’s a more home. The drainage is being done by an exterior drainage company. Will involve a new outflow to creek, extensive trenches and rocks to support better drainage. We know we will need to replace significant patches of sod etc.

We live in Vancouver. It rains all the time lol. That said we have a sprinkler system that waters twice a week from May 1 foreword due to water restrictions.

We do have a golden retriever.

You probably won't need to water twice a week in Vancouver. Perhaps not even once a week. I'd actually advise doing watering manually and setting the system off when needed--grasses want about an inch of water a week through the warmer seasons, with both rain and irrigation counting. But they can live on less, and watering too often leads to shallow roots that don't try to go deep looking for water. If possible, let the soil dry out between waterings (difficult in rainy locales, or areas with bad drainage...)

The patches don't look like dog damage; the whole lawn looks kind of underfed, so I'd expect dog patches to be deeper green rather than paler. Even if so, they should be surrounded by a darker ring and they aren't. I'm thinking an invasive grass (cough--P. annua or P. trivialis perhaps, both of which flourish in damp environments).

If so, while there are several ways to get those gone, the easiest is RoundUp and re-sod when the rest of the job gets done.

And since it's northern lawn, the northern feeding cycle would hold, here.

Rains all the time until it stops. Then it doesn't rain all the time until next year. Is that about right?

I'm going to suggest that you're watering too frequently when it is not raining. My experience in the desert-adjacent, full sun, 90-degree days, windy part of Texas is that, following the rains we typically get in May, I might not water again until July. If it rains in July, I'll wait weeks until the grass tells me it needs a drink. Last year, a drought year, I watered 5 times (if I remember right). Whereas you water 8 times a month in an area which is much cooler and likely more humid with better soil. Here's what I repeatedly say about watering.

Water deeply and infrequently. Deeply means 1 inch all at one time, not split into fractions to cover a time period. You can measure 1 inch by placing tuna or cat food cans around the yard and timing how long it takes YOUR sprinkler system to fill all the cans. Remember that time because you'll use that every time you water. Frequency depends on many factors including high temperature, cloud cover, shade, soil, grass type, mowing height, wind, humidity, and maybe some other factors. By far the most important factor is daily high temperature. With temperatures below 70 degrees F (I can convert to C if you like), water deeply once a month. With temps between 70 and 80, water once every 3 weeks. With temps between 80 and 90, water every other week. With temps from 90 to 100, water deeply every week. With temps from 100 to 110, water every 3-4 days.

That is a guideline. The main point is that if you water deeply, you, on an island in the cold part of the Pacific, will NEVER need to water twice a week on a schedule.

Mowing. Whatever grass you decide on, mulch mow at or near the mower's highest setting. Grass mowed at the highest setting grows deeper roots which can capture water, and nutrients, from much deeper in the soil.

Whooo's a gooood dog!!! You might have trouble reestablishing the lawn if the dog is young and playful. The yellow spots in the lawn might be due to her peeing all in one spot. Female dogs are more known for that, so I'm making that assumption. Organic fertilizer, 1 to 3 times per year will help to process the urine so you never see yellow spots again.

Morph mentioned using soap on your lawn. Here's some background. Many people think they have compacted soil for some reason. I think they have been told by their parents, neighbors, newspapers, YouTube, and all sorts of sources that you have to core aerate every year. Compaction is caused by squeezing the air out of the soil when the soil is saturated with water. Livestock producers experience compaction when they leave their animals out in a saturated pasture. That is a lesson they learn quickly - designate one pasture to move the animals to when it rains so you don't ruin all your land. When you see animals sunk in the soil around a pond, they are compacting the soil. Homeowners, by and large, don't have that situation. Generally it is poor practice to mow the lawn after it rains, so if you follow that advice, chances are you aren't going to compact your soil. Also don't play games when it's saturated. Still homeowners report compacted soil. I think what they have is hard soil, not compacted. Hard soil is caused by a reduced population of beneficial fungi in the soil. That can be caused by lack of organic fertilizer, lack of water for months at a time, or saturation for months at a time. Core aeration punches hundreds or thousands of holes in the surface. Supposedly those holes will open the soil to allow air in and cure "compaction." The soap approach, specifically a liquid soap like any clear shampoo, takes a biological approach. Shampoo is a surfactant that allows water to infiltrate much deeper into the soil and set up the perfect environment for beneficial soil fungi. The temperatures are moderated by the moist soil, evaporation is reduced, and moisture is better controlled. In that environment the fungi will open up trillions of pores in the soil allowing air and water to pass in and out of the soil. With your situation of continually moist soil, I'd see what it takes to get it to dry out. I'd stop watering once the rain stops and see how long the grass seems good. Never mind how hard or dry the soil seems - just watch the grass. If your roots are shallow, it might only last a week before the grass looks poorly. If you practice deep and infrequent watering, the roots will grow deeper and the grass will go much longer before looking dry. My wife used to want to water every time the soil felt hard. It took me a long time to break that habit. Anyway, the application rate for shampoo is 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet (roughly 100 ml per 100 square meters). It makes no difference if you accidentally double, triple, or quadruple the amount you apply. You can't hurt the grass or soil with soap. I applied baby shampoo in 2012 and when I moved out in 2015, the soil was still great. So it is up to you. Spend 50 cents on shampoo or spend $75 to rent a core aerator. Try the shampoo first.

Thanks everyone lots of great tips. Appreciate all the comments

I also need to get the sprinkler company back in when we start up again to fix some things. One of the reasons we water so much in summer is that the back garden is connected to the lawn sprinklers and not on its own schedule. I need to get that separated so we can water the lawn less but still do the garden which needs it.

It actually rains a lot here. Rains in the summer too. We have stretches without rain but not too many. Maybe a few weeks at a time but not much more ever. Our summer temps in July/August are around 25-30 degrees Celsius with some hot spells in there of course.

The dog is 6 years old. She is a female and does like to pee in same spots. We have a rock in her water that is supposed to prevent the yellowing and I think does. What you see in the pic is likely different. Before we had the rocks the grass would have a burned look to it.

We definitely have a few intense weeds that have spread and that is something I want to tackle too. I have someone coming next week to help us form a plan overall so we can figure out what to do. This is also just the backyard. We also have a side yard with a large cedar that sheds constantly all over the grass and garden and a large front yard and gardens. The front yard is a totally different beast than the back. Not damp at all and dandelions love it.