There is a woman I know, Leona Lisa, who is starting a lawn renovation project that sounds entirely familiar. At least for those of us who have lousy looking, unhealthy grass. I've got a patch or two in my South Hill villa (ha). So far, my solution has been to slowly rip out the grass, replacing it with planting beds filled with perennials and ornamental grasses. Leona is slowly converting me to her way of thinking: grass is sort of elemental, a necessity in some ways. Consider keeping some of it. I suppose so. She says it's a good provider of oxygen and good for the atmosphere. I'm all about that. Cool. And it's attractive, provides curb appeal. Yeah, I buy that. Plus, my child does like to knock around a soccer ball on our lawn.

But what's a girl to do with soggy patchy areas of lawn and moss that is showing up all over the place? (arrgh! rain! shade! drama!) Well, folks, read on.

Leona, the garden department manager at the Fircrest Home Depot, is rehabbing her boyfriend's lawn. He's got issues. Big ones. The pH balance is off. There's some kind of weird mesh plastic in the sod that she has to rip through. The yard has serious moss. Does your head hurt yet? Mine does.

He's putting his house on the market. Leona is helping him give it the curb appeal she says grass can provide. She's promising us detailed reports of her progress, as well as pictures.

Leona told me Monday, "The lawn to me is intriguing. You don’t even know (all the trouble) until you start."

What's she attacking first? The moss. "Moss is very opportunistic. If the grass isn’t healthy, moss will take over every chance it gets," she said. She's improving the health of the lawn to solve the problem of a repeat performance by the evil moss. To remove the stuff that's already there, she used a granular moss killer application (iron). It's a less strenuous alternative to the "Freddy Krueger" method of using a huge scary rake to manually extract the moss, Leona said.

Even Leona knows sometimes parts of a lawn are not worth saving. "There’s parts of the yard, we’re not even going to try and have grass growing; we’re going to change it out and make some planting areas. ... I’m going to bring in hostas, impatiens, heuchera."

Stay tuned for more details on the fabulous Leona Lisa renovation project.