Why I Oughta...

The clean-up continues in the backyard - thanks to a little window of 50-degree temperatures this week.  First, I showed the trio of Muhly Grasses at the end of the boardwalk that I clipped and composted .  Then, yesterday I posted a photo of the screened porch border/bed where I clipped and composted four Karl Foerster Feather Reed Grasses .   Today, I turned my attention to the colony of Hellebores in the backyard understory garden.  A couple weeks back, I posted a photo showing the buds had emerged on these .  Below is a new before-and-after showing last season's foliage being clipped-off and removed.   Here's the before - showing the brown (and some green) foliage along with A LOT of leaf litter: And, here below, is the after.  A lot less foliage.  (I hauled the stems and foliage to the compost bin.). But, even after leaving the stems and leaves, there is still A LOT of leaf litter left behind.  Most of it chopped up into little...

Yesterday, I showed the three Muhly Grasses that I cleaned-up for Spring near the boardwalk .  Today, the photo below shows the small bed that borders the screened porch that included a number of Karl Foerster Feather Reed Grasses.  This bed is also home to some Angelina Sedum that I transplanted from the other side of the patio last year.  And, like the Muhly grass clippings, I took these grasses back to the compost bin instead of using the chop-and-drop method.  As you can see in the photo above, I did leave some material behind including the grasses and a bunch of leaf litter.

The three Ruby Muhly Grasses that are planted at the end of the boardwalk seemed to do fine last year.  When you look back at them in September, the thing that jumps out THE MOST is the lack of space in teh bed .   Late last Fall, I attempted to change that by doing a 'lazy bed extension' using the cardboard method to smother the turfgrass .   This Spring, that newly extended bed will need to be cleaned-up and edged and topped with a fresh layer of mulch.  With the warmer temperatures recently, I decided to continue to do a little bit of garden cleanup by pruning back the blades of these Muhly grasses.  Below is a before-and-after of the three grasses that sit right at the landing of the boardwalk: Unlike the the Autumn Moor Grasses in the front yard , I hauled this yard waste back to the compost bin.  I'll post an update on that situation in a couple of days.

Yesterday, I posted some details of the short, 26" (or so) tall gravity retaining wall that we'll need to build out this Spring in the backyard.  I talked about some of the details need sorting out (type/look of block) and others need to be finalized (straight run, vs. L-shape vs. curved wall).   When I was out running one of the kids to their various activities, I stopped at a signal and noticed a retaining wall on one corner.  Below are a couple of photos.  They show that this wall is curved, includes a 'cap', but also includes a contrasting row of blocks at the top of the wall.    These blocks are smooth (not jagged fronts) and have no bevel on the corners.   That (smooth face) is in contrast to the example photo I posted yesterday .   I see (at the corner) three full blocks above grade and one partially below grade.  Those are (likely) 8" tall blocks, so this wall is 30-inches-or-so tall above grade (8+8+8+3.5+2.5 = 30). T...

The pizza oven patio project continues to be a work-in-progress with a number of details that we need to figure out/solve-for before too much time passes, so we can begin the project when the weather breaks. Back in January, I posted this 'notebook' post - where I ran through a number of decisions/items that need to be sorted and came out with these three lists. First, the list of 'elements' or component-projects inside the larger project: 1. The floor 2. A retaining wall 3. Stairs from patio 4. Roof Structure (with piers) 5. Prep Counter/bar-top 6. Utilities 7. Landscaping 8. Oven doghouse, landing and veneer Second, I put together a series of 'prep-work decisions' that need to be made: 1. Figure out utilities. Primarily electric. where they go, how they get there. in 2. Figure out 'level' for the floor and base of retaining wall. That requires decision on material. 2 depths - sunken prep area. 3. Wall details: placement, material, siz...

The twenty-one year mark of me writing this blog came and went without me remembering to recognize the milestone.  Back on February 16, 2024 (a little over a year ago), I marked twenty years of writing online.  Twenty years of being a blogger .   Today, a week late, but, I still think it is worth marking 21 years.  21 years!  Wow.   My blog can now drink.    The past year has been like most of the years before it:  I wrote something everyday.  What some call SUSDAT .   The Blogger CMS is showing that I have more than 5100 published posts over those 21 years.   In those 21 years, I've had: 4 jobs 3 kids 2 houses and I met, fell in love and married to 1 special person. I continue to find joy in publishing here on my own domain.  From my [garden diary] to the occiasional interest-related post to the *very rare* political post, I find that flexing my writing muscles has been (and continues to be) and import...

Out in the (enclosed) greenhouse portion of the garden center at our local big box store, things are starting to look like Spring.  The arrival of grass seed in big forty-pound bags along with the cardboard display racks of vegetable and annual flowering seed packets are usually the first things in-stock for the season. But the past few years, they've been joined by something new:  dahlia tubers sold in color-combination sets.  Last year, I saw Longfield Gardens bringing to market a number of dahlia 'kits' and Proven Winners was running some mixed bulb boxes featuring gladiolas .  and this year Proven Winners is out first with their "Garden Blends" boxes that combine a number of dahlia tubers into an easy-to-plant package. The Proven Winners site has a page up about bulbs where they share that they've partnered with Garden State Bulbs to supply the summer-flowering tubers.    Here's how they're described: Are you giddy for gladiolus? Do you adore dahl...

Yesterday, I posted the first step in the build-out of our pizza oven patio area with the elevation change calculation that I was able to complete using a length of string and a couple of stakes.  I observed a 26" elevation difference between the grade of our 'upper' patio and the top grade of the pizza oven slab .   Back in January, I laid out what I think are the 'order of operations' of the build and included a number of 'to be solved' steps - including that above mentioned elevation change.  Here's the rest of that 'to be solved' list: 1. Figure out utilities. Primarily electric. where they go, how they get there. in 2. Figure out 'level' for the floor and base of retaining wall. That requires decision on material. 2 depths - sunken prep area. 26" delta. 3. Wall and floor details: placement, material, size, height, length, stairs, drainage and even stairs. This determines the floorplan. 4. Lay out floorplan. Size o...

Yesterday, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker delivered what Shia Kapos at Politico (screenshot below) described as a 'combined State of the State and Budget Address' to the Illinois General Assembly in Springfield .   For the most part (and despite the early days of blogging being *in* politics), I have veer'd my blog into the [garden diary] lane and out of the [politics] lane. But, I was struck by the moment this week in Illinois.  Shia's column (or newsletter) lead with Pritzker's speech and how MSNBC's Rachel Maddow was so inspired by Governor Pritzker's speech that she 'opened her show playing three minutes of it." Screenshot of Politico Illinois newsletter about Pritzker's budget address I am not a state budget expert (nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night ), but I've read some of the coverage coming out of the speech and there's certainty some good news and some...well...not so good news.  At least for Illinois and Illi...

A couple days ago, I posted a photo of how Disney used the "European Fan" pattern with cobblestones to make a hard surface/walkway at Disney Springs and mused about how that might be a really nice way to bring a unique floor surface to our pizza oven patio.   That surface material (in this case cobblestones) is a key decision that I have to begin to work towards as the calendar begins to soon turn to March. I laid out what I thought (at the time) was my path towards progress with our pizza oven patio in this post back in early January .    The list that I put together included a number of 'to be figured out' items that would help me sort the rest of the decisions - including utilities, size of patio and the change in elevation between the current patio and the pizza oven foundation.  That delta in height is important because it tells me how high the retaining wall needs to be - which in turns tells us what materials/engineering is required to make the wall *wor...

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a photo of a tropical, beach-dwelling shrub on Disney's Lookout Cay at Lighthouse Point that had silver foliage and was nestled in amongst a palm tree right on the white-sand beach.   We visited both of Disney's "private islands" recently and some of the early reviews of Lookout Cat at Lighthouse Point had me thinking that we were going to arrive at a 'young' island with lots of 'young' trees, shrubs and plants.  Whereas, Castaway Cay has been established in 1998 - so it is more than 25 years 'old'.   There was some chatter of how it 'was going to take some time for Lookout Cay to grow' and that the plants were all not-established and tiny.   Of the two islands, I enjoyed my time on both.  But...I'm surprised that in hindsight, I think I prefer Lookout Cay over the two - and that's with the horticulture - which *is* very young - in mind.  Below are a few photos showing various shots of trees, sh...

Amongst the various hard surfaces around the Walt Disney World Resort are 'realistic' (Animal Kingdom) and not-so-realistic (the brown middle part in Liberty Square).  It isn't hard to miss some of the hardscape elements, but it is also worth taking a beat and looking around to see what they're using in various spots.  One of them is this European Fan at Disney Springs.  See below for the cobble stones: I've been spending time thinking about the hard surfaces for my pizza oven patio - here's my initial 'musings' post .  This European Fan pattern sent me looking out on the Web for how I could use it down there.  I found this concrete fan pattern that can be used to stamp concrete .  Could be a nice treatment, right?

Another sure sign of Spring coming soon is the emergence of the pink, conical-shaped tips of Hellebores that we have planted in a small colony in our backyard.  I posted one-year-and-one-day ago about these same tips here .  And, in the photo below, you can see that they're back - peeking out of the soil, but living nestled in all of the leaf litter from this past Fall.  I took this photo before the snow arrived this past week, so the foliage clean-up will have to wait until the snow melts away.