Spring In Midland Odessa Means Yard Work–HELP!

It's that time of year again. Things are steadily warm during the daytime with overnight lows that typically don't get much below 50 degrees. Plants are awake, grass is coming back to life and turning from brown to green again. Flowers are blooming. Even our rose bushes we had put in upfront at the house have beautiful blooms on them.....

But not everything around my house is 'coming up roses', so to speak. My sod hasn't completely come back to life-still has a lot of brown patches even after almost a month of watering...

Not to mention the weeds are out of control right now.....

My wife is in love with the little purple flower weeds (I've been told by coworkers that these are weeds in Texas but she loves the purple flowers)... There's a bush of them in what is supposed to be just a rock bed in my backyard.

And my front yard, which is normally all rocks with a street ring and the flower box with the rose bushes-is a cornucopia of weeds all over...

The tree in the tree ring, which was planted last year, we think is dead because even after weeks of watering it's shown no signs of life-no blooms for leaves and no more height, and it's very brittle. So it looks like the one or two brief cold snaps we had this past winter took care of that. So we're headed out this weekend to see what we can find to plant in the tree ring that will withstand frost in the winter. We have had suggestions-like a Wisteria tree but we don't like them. So we're still on the hunt. Loved a Gardenia that we bought at Home Depot-but our landscaper says they won't survive a frost. Thankfully, once we find one this weekend, the landscaper is coming out early next week to remove weeds, spray and fertilize which will hopefully wake the sod up and plant the new tree. And apparently just to make me smile when I got home from work today-the wind Gods in Midland thought a tumbleweed on my front lawn would add to the decor.

If the treatments don't work and you have a suggestion on how to pep the sod back up for us-please comment below. Y'all have lived here longer than we have (22 months now for us) and you know the climate and how things go here with grass/plants better than we do. Feel free to give us a point in the right direction! And thanks!