Can anyone ID this white flower thing? Its pretty much all over my yard. I am hoping that its grass that is blooming? Please dont tell me its a weed!
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it's definitely a weed. kinda hard to ID with those photos though. it looks like it could be stitchwort, brambles, or bedstraw. those two pictures you provided look completely different from each other, with the exception of the white flower. it could also be something else. regardless, it looks like it's in patches where the intended species is not present. so, you could just kill the entire patch with roundup and reseed right into it. don't bother waiting for 2 weeks or whatever the label says, you can seed perennial ryegrass, tall fescue, or kentucky bluegrass the same day you spray the roundup or a few days after. but if you're going to seed, you need to keep it wet, don't just plant it and expect it to grow. and don't just sprinkle it on the ground. make some grooves with a hard rake or something similar and work the seed into the ground. seed to soil contact is essential to germinate grass seed.
to the OP:
get your yard aerated. i would bet it hasn't been done in years, if ever. if the overall appearance of your lawn is unhealthy, fertilize it at the rate of 0.5 lbs of N (that's the first number N-P-K) about every two months (i know, people say twice a year, but trust me, it's fine to do it more), it should tell you how to approximately achieve that on the back of whatever fertilizer you buy. i know people are happy with scotts step program, but IMHO, you can easily achieve the same results without spending a fortune on that stuff. if you want to use a preventive crabgrass 'weed n' feed', fine, but if you give your grass a competitive advantage now, you shouldn't have to worry about it. just get a fertilizer that is high in Nitrogen (46-0-0 will have your neighbors scratching their heads trying to figure out how you got your lawn so green, but you'll have to find a fertilizer distributor/company around to sell this to you, it usually isn't available at ace/lowes/HD, but those places are easy to find). i personally would also go ahead and overseed your entire lawn. rent a seeder from somewhere or hire it out, but again you need to establish some contact between the seed and the soil. spring is generally not a favored establishment time, but the reality is you can seed anytime you want. cool season grasses actually germinate well in the spring, so you can get it up and going now and you'll have to baby it through the summer a bit, but by fall you could have a decent backup of new growth to help. since you have shade issues, don't plant kentucky bluegrass. plant perennial ryegrass, or some sort of fescue (usually you'll see red/tall fescue for lawns). and don't buy one of those 'fast establishment' mixes, they usually contain a ton of annual ryegrass that will die after a year and if any of the KBG in there hasn't come up yet will leave you right back where you started. again, seek out a seed company in the area and get some decent stuff. nothing wrong with a single species being planted. scott's is too happy with their lawn mixtures.
as far as mowing goes, there's really no reason to mow your yard at 1.5 or 2 inches. 3" is the lowest i usually recommend to home owners. it will mean you have to mow less often and the canopy will hide things better at 3" than it would at 1.5 or 2. try to mow once (or more) every week or at most 10 days. any less often and you will be stressing your grass too much (but it happens, not a huge deal). and as others have said, please keep your blade sharp, that's the #1 problem with home owner lawns.
good luck. and you can look at those scott's books, but they will just have a recommendation for each of their products in there for each problem or goal listed. Here are some university extension sites that I would go to before a scott's publication:
http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/lawn/almanac/index.html
http://urbanext.illinois.edu/lawntalk/
http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/html/ec/ec1521/
There are plenty of others via google. good luck and let us know how it's going.