Trying to Stay Green During December Heat Wave

We had a couple days of upper 60's weekend, so I got a little bit of yard work done around the utility box bed. I also snapped a few photos of my yard status showing how it's trying to stay green as long as possible into the winter. It darn well should because I paid for extra treatments from the fertilizer company. I'm wishing I did some autumn mulching in places, but overall not too bad.

Can you tell which yard is mine?

This was the first year where the utility box bed in the front grew in all the way. In fact, the Russian sage went a little crazy - I'm glad it was considered a smaller version of Russian sage 'Little Spire' because I can't imagine how out of hand it would have been if it was a fuller version.

The Karl Foerster grass grew in nicely - very early riser in Spring and looked nice all year long. The only problem was that I didn't plan the mulch bed wide enough to acomodate the grass hanging over the edge a bit. I'm torn because I don't want to expand the mulch too much because it looks weird in winter to have this giant bare spot - but in the summer I don't like trying to mow under an ornamental grass and I don't want it to look crowded.

I'm also hoping my cone flower self-seed and multiply because the little pop of color is definitely nice so it's not JUST Russian sage getting all the attention.

Special shout out to Shasta daisy keeping dark green leaves this far into December. I got them over the 4th of July from my parents and it looks like they rooted in really well. My neighbors said I could go ahead and landscape their side of the box too. I know the Shasta daisy will spread but hopefully they don't mind - right now they just have a little tiny strip of mulch on their side.

Finally, and I know I've talked about it before, but I've got some serious white fungus on the grass in my side yard. In fact, when my roommate Kenny walked along the side yard I could see a little cloud of white powder get kicked up at his feet. Wooooow. I might have to re-seed that whole side yard come Spring.

White powder mildew on grass in both side yards now