Along with other commenters here, I've given up on trying to have a perfect lawn. As long as it's green, it's fine with me. I'm also trying to gradually reduce the amount of property given over to lawn by a little bit each year as I expand beds of native plants. In my experience here in the Mid-Atlantic region the upkeep in terms of time between a lawn and garden bed is pretty much a 1:1 tradeoff. Occasional weeding and a one-time day spent planting annuals in the Spring is about the same as having to mow every 1.5 weeks.