Reclaiming more yard

We have a sizable backyard but much of it isn't usable lawn. We've been cutting away at it little by little, beginning with the big project of 3 years ago when we pulled back a ton of ivy. Last week we made a little more progress after a long hiatus.

On the side of the house next to an empty lot there is what must once have been a garden set off with railroad ties. Whatever the original intent, we inherited a mess of ivy, random plants, and even a few stray saplings that had found a safe place to root. It seemed like a small and manageable area to tackle this spring. We didn't get a true "before" picture but this is early in the process:

 And here it is when we wrapped up for the day:

 And an arial shot:

We pulled up almost everything up to the first railroad tie divider except for the biggest tree (think it's an oak - we'll take a picture next time we're out there) and some random strawberry plants we found growing in the corner. Once we clear the second half, we'll pull up the railroad ties (ugh!), rototill up the remaining bits of ivy and weed roots, and try our best to entice some grass to grow. This area of our yard is dangerously close to our property line (we can't figure out where it is and haven't cared enough to have someone come survey) so we're not going to do much more than that.

What else have we been up to? Well we've been lucky to have some great spring weather and a very tolerant baby, so we've been setting her up outside with us in the shade and doing our usual annual yard maintenance (mostly to no avail, but apparently we are eternal optimists in this regard...).

Baby next to her hawthorn tree:

Thatching up some dead grass, followed by over-seeding with new seeds that didn't actually seem to root, followed by - quite a bit later - some fertilizing weed and feed when it became obvious that we had a weed problem more than a lack of grass problem. This year, remembering your advice last  year, we saw we had those little flowers in the lawn and tried to take action. But unlike last summer, we are not going to spread compost and reseed the whole thing again. Too much work. D would like to hire someone to aerate the lawn for real, since last time we thought we'd hired someone to aerate the lawn they did it by poking holes in it, instead of pulling out plugs to loosen up the soil

We realized - to our annoyance - that we are much better at getting grass to grow from nothing than from fixing what we already have. Especially because the front lawn is inundated with liriope that had spread and mixed with the grass. Sometimes I'm tempted to try to uproot the whole front lawn and start over. Or get a professional to do it for us. Our best attempts at over-seeding, fertilizing, etc. seem to be going nowhere.

And of course we couldn't focus on the lawn without some serious care of the gardens. Here we are weeding and mulching the flower beds:

We never get everything we plant to come back but this year our plants have definitely filled out a bit (except for losing our giant rosemary plant to the harsh winter). This fall for the first time since we put these things in the ground, I want to start dividing up some of the heartier things like the irises to spread them around.

Have you done any gardening lately?