Why I Oughta...

Before the snow totally melted this week, I noticed a phenomenon in our backyard:  I had created a ' Desire Path ' between our house and the compost bin in the back of our yard.   What are desire paths?  Check out this post from U-W Madison .  They talk about desire paths are an example of the relationship between people (me) and place (our backyard): But desire paths are not inert histories. Once established, they influence how pedestrians use and interact with their environment going forward. To the dismay of some planners and to the fascination of others, desire paths are representative of the constantly evolving relationship between people and place. Below is a photo showing our 2023-2024 Wintertime Compost Bin Desire Path: Speaks to the continued kitchen-scrap composting that we've done all Winter.  Egg Shells, coffee grounds and vegetable scraps all found their way to the bins and put in the bin with the "Feed Me" Compost Bin sign .  To date, th...

I really do NOT like the dang rabbits that live in and around our yard and garden.  I've done my best to protect against their damage, but I didn't do enough this Winter.  With the snow melting, I took one VERY small walk through part of the garden to see how things have fared in the past month-or-so.  I don't want to walk on the wet ground and didn't walk in any of the beds to avoid compaction.   But...from the edge of the beds, I was able to see some serious rabbit damage on a number of my Oakleaf Hydrangeas.  Even on one that I wrapped in Chicken wire.  What the heck!?! Here's a few photos showing the rabbit pressure - and gnawing of the tips - on my SnowQueen and Alice Oakleaf Hydrangeas.    The problem is that these flowering shrubs bloom on old wood.  That means...2024 will be a year of limited flowers.  Bummer.   Weather-permitting, I'll go out and grab more photos.  Coming up with a real plan on rabbits feels ...

Yesterday, I posted a photo of the 'drywell exploration' that I conducted to find the edges and depth of the drywell to discover if it would serve as a suitable subsurface for my diy backyard wood-fired pizza oven.   I've also recently posted about some brickwork inspiration here .    When thinking about the oven, the facade is a big part of the 'looks', but so too is the roofline.  I recently came across this Tiktok from RustyVanRanch  - embedded below - that shows a barn roof that has an extended peak out front at the top of the gable: @rustyvanranch ♬ original sound - Rusty Van Ranch Here's a screenshot of the roof in question: A little digging revealed that those are called " Hay Hoods ".  Some call them "Crow's Beaks".  It serves a purpose of providing a little bit more shelter over the hay loft door.  For my pizza oven, there's appeal in a little bit of protection WITHOUT creating a huge, overhead roof.   Filing this a...

A few weeks ago, I posted a couple of items related to my 2024 goal of building a wood-fired pizza oven in our backyard including a look at a couple of locations , some brickwork inspiration and how I could build the stand out of cinder blocks - including corners .   With the snow melting away this week, I went out to look at one of the locations and remembered...that ahead of the snow, I was digging around trying to find the 'edges' of the drywell.   Below is a photo showing a number of locations that I dug down to see 'how deep' the drywell is located and how I was probing to find the 'edge' of the well.   The drop from grade to drywell is variable across this six-foot-by-six-foot section.  Surprisingly so.  I also found (I think) two of the 'edges' of the drywell.  Which...if I sited the oven where I *wanted* to, would have a small portion of the foundation OVERHANGING the drywell.  That would mean that I'd have to bring in some gra...

I have a couple of colonies of Angelina Sedum planted in the small, rectangular beds on either-side-of our back stoop that started as a volunteer and have survived over a number of years.  Last Spring, I planted a pair of Spring Grove Ginkgos in the beds and transplanted the sedum from one side to the other .   This particular Sedum has been pretty tough.  Tolerant of our (previously Zone 5b) now 6a Winters.  And some foot-traffic.  This year, the timing of the VERY cold weather was paired with a few-days-prior arrival of a few inches of snow.  That meant that there was a natural snow blanket for insulation when the temps dropped below zero.  Look back at these photos from a few weeks ago showing the Spring Grove Ginkgo silhouette .  Plenty of insulation.  How did this Angelina Sedum do with winter?  Below are a couple of photos showing the post-snow (still some to melt) condition: And...while there is still *plenty* of Winter remai...

Planted all the way back in 2019, we have a Juniper shrub planted in a large yellow, upright container on our patio.  It has been there for five (19, 20, 21, 22, 23) growing seasons and is something that just sort-of exists on the patio.  At least...that's the way I think about it - meaning...that I do virtually NOTHING to it all year long. Here's what it looked like in the Fall of 2020 - when it was green and the tips of the juniper were emerging around the edge of the container, but not by much.  All Summer and Fall, it is a nice green color.   But, come Winter...something happens to this shrub that (at first...) I thought was decline.  It turns an almost rusty-red color.  The first time that happened - in 2020 - I figured the shrub was done .  But, come Spring...it green'd right up. In every subsequent Winter, it has done the same.  Green in Summer and Fall.  Rusty-red in Winter.   Here's what it looked like a little over a...

As I've done a few times, I wanted to document a few looks at the snow bank that has been created IB2DWs.  This is an area where both me AND my neighbor pile driveway snow, so it gets higher/taller than the rest of our front yard.   Here's a look at the snow level in 2021 .  And here's a look at the snow level in 2022 .  Looking at the photos below, there are of course some changes.  The conifers added this past Fall give a different look at the depth.  But, the Red Fox Katsura and Bald Cypress are there all the way back in 2021.  Naturally...the trees have grown, so it isn't super easy to compare.  Based on the branching on the Katsura, I'm thinking that 2023/2024 snow pile is in between the two other recorded.  2022 was deeper.  2021 was less snow.  Just an eyeball guess. Below is an early morning look:

Yesterday, I created and published a lengthy - and winding - post about a potential front-yard garden transformation that is anchored in conifers and contains a potential 'path' through the middle.  In that post, I talked about using a berm in part to create some elevation change and I also sort-of came to the conclusion that I would certainly NEED to start in phases as the project is a multi-year planting (at least for me).  In that post, I concluded that based on some inspiration, I could (in theory) start down by the sidewalk with a small bed and expand from there.   One of the dependencies is the creation of the berm and the location for said berm.  My current thinking is that the berm is created if-and-only-if, I do some excavation for the pizza oven.  I would haul the material that I excavated from the back out to the front and build up a little berm on the driveway side of the front yard, down near the sidewalk.  I bring this all up, because I ...

Beyond the pizza-oven build, my mind has been thinking about the front yard for 2024.  I went ham on the IB2DWs extended bed last Fall with my new conifer garden , but I've been reading and watching things on the Web that have me thinking about the rest of our yard.   If I'm being honest, our front yard isn't bad. Not at all.  It is, however...traditional.  It is what everybody in the suburbs has: a foundation bed with a corner tree and a stretch of front lawn from that bed down to the sidewalk.  Followed by a turf parkway between the sidewalk and street.  Over the years, I've done a few things:  planned for some tree planting .  Tucked a Saratoga Ginkgo , some Stachys Hummelo and Sesleria Greenlees into the small island bed by the driveway.  And extended the front porch bed a bit this past year .   The rest is a blank canvas.   Some of the things that I've come across/influenced me a bit include this piece from Gar...

The last time I did a check-in on my Chicago tavern pizza progress using a dough curing process that John from Crust Fund released out into the pizza-normie world was back in March of 2023 when I shared a photo showing the undercarriage microblisters .  I moved away from this style during the warmer months, but with the cold here, I've gone back inside our home oven. Below are a couple of shots from recent bakes.  I've been getting better with keeping the skins round and I've adopted the application of blobs of fresh mozz on a plain cheese pizza (mostly for the looks).  Pre-heated our Baking Steel at full-blast in our oven (somewhere close to 550 degrees) and these baked at between 8 and 10 minutes.   Bottoms were perfect.  And tops were dressed appropriately - something I don't do very often.  (I typically go overboard on cheese.)

Analysis causes paralysis is a trope that people say in business and life.  But, I'm NOW feeling that very thing HARD in regards to our backyard pizza oven planning.  It was just a week ago that I VERY CONFIDENTLY posted about how I was down to just two finalist locations for our oven .  But, today?  I'm not so sure any longer.  What about a 3rd location, on the south side of the yard, about the same distance from the house.  But, tucked into a current bed where the Alice Oakleaf Hydrangeas are planted?  See below for this 3rd location at the bottom of the drawing: This 3rd location re-introduces one of the ORIGINAL sites that I contemplated as far back as 2017 .    What does this new site get us?  It certainly doesn't take advantage of the grade change, so that means that the full height and mass of the oven will be in-view.  That provides for a bit of screening.  But, it also means that the oven becomes a garden focal-point....

I've posted a couple of things in my annual [Christmas Haul] series already - both of which were faux bois.  A small faux bois plant stand .  And a faux bois cache pot.    But, I also upgraded my garden tools via a Christmas gift of these small hand pruning snips.  They are light-weight, have a safety lock and finger grip.  And come with a small, leather holster.  These snips fit in my tool set below my secateurs/pruners and are something that I've been looking to use when it comes to arranging flowers.  The pruners that I use are too much to remove thorns from roses or snipping off flower stems from delicate perennials.   I like the sheath/holster as it helps me keep from LOSING them. If I set them down, there's more visually - to see with the holster.  I've kept my Niwaki pruners in their holster and that's been helpful in me keeping tabs on them.

Earlier this week, I posted my 3-D model using LEGO bricks of my proposed wood-fired pizza oven stand that would be built from a couple different sizes of standard cinder blocks - 16x8x8 and 8x8x8.  In that post (and using the model), I determined that I needed 4.5 blocks deep (from front-to-back) and 4 blocks wide (side-to-side).  That gave me a 74" deep by 64" wide block stand.  Or 6'2" deep and 5'4" wide. But...there's a new development.  At least...new to me, the novice bricklayer.  Turns out, there are 'corner' cinder blocks.   I discovered this fact when I was at Menards looking over the block inventory.  Here's a few photos showing these L-shaped corner-forming cinder blocks  below and how they work together with normal blocks.  These are 12" block compatible. Below is a drawing from Menards that shows the dimensions of these L-shaped corner cinder blocks in 10" width: There are so many variables that I still need to work out...

The pair of Spring Grove Ginkgo trees (dwarf Ginkgos) that I planted this past growing season on either side of our rear stoop are worth documenting in the garden diary.  Being winter, they're clearly dormant, but they're doing some interesting things:  They're clearly exhibiting some foliar marcescence with many of their leaves clinging to the limbs.   And, they're covered with buds.  That are stud'd everywhere.  On the limbs.  On the trunk.  At the tips of branches.  And all along them.  They're quite different and really nice to look at when contrasted with he white snow.  Here's a pair of photos showing the same one: the north-side Spring Grove Ginkgo .  The second one is planted by the Grill on the southside of the stoop, but I am not including photos here. The snow cover on the ground is a few inches thick and I'm hoping that it is providing a nice blanket of insulation on this young, one-year-in-the-ground dwarf ginkgo....

It has been two-and-a-half years since I added a photo to my online [coaster collection] with the last one posted was in Summer of 2021 when I added the Riviera Resort down at Walt Disney World to my collection .  Earlier this year, we stayed at the Grand Californian Hotel at Disneyland Resort and either from the hotel room or from the lounge by the pool, I found and came away with this lovely disposable coaster.  One side features the letters G C H.  The reverse is a flower and leaves. The title tells the story of this being the 15th piece of Disney Parks ephemera in the form of coasters from restaurants and resorts.   This is the third Disneyland Resort Coaster; with a Disneyland Hotel one and the Lamplight Lounge Pixar coasters already being posted in the collection.   Here's the Full Disney Parks coaster list: The full Disney list includes: 1. The standard one you see in your rooms @  Walt Disney World resort hotels . 2. This  black an...

I've been busy getting to know Sketchup - in an attempt to create a true, accurate model of my (hopefully to-be-built-in-2024) backyard wood-fired pizza oven .  But, I also figured out a different, three-dimensional approach that will work (at least for me).  The stand of the oven is built from typical cinder blocks:  16x8x8 (16" long, 8" tall, 8" deep) and half-blocks of 8x8x8 (8" long, 8" tall, 8" deep) that are commonly available from any big-box hardware store.   I was playing around with sketchup one afternoon when I realized that I could build out a model using some common bricks.   I wanted to get a sense for how the stand would come together and also begin to build out a parts-list for the blocks.   I went up to the kids lego bins and quickly figured out how to build this: Part 3001 (2x4 brick)  has 8 studs on top and is the typical rectangle brick that you think of when you think of LEGO bricks.   Using a one-stud for ...

One evening, I peeked out at the backyard and noticed this combo view (part ours, part borrowed) of two different Linden trees.  Ours is a Greenspire Linden that is trained into a horizontal cordon espalier; backed by our cedar fence.  And just behind and lit-from-below is our neighbors (unknown variety) of a Linden Tree that is covered in the day's snow.  Quite a look isn't it?  I posted about "Winter Interest" just a few days ago and mentioned that perhaps as a result of lacking conifers, the majority of the "winter interest" in our garden is from snow + structure.  Here...just add "light".  And you have a little bit of winter garden magic.