Why I Oughta...

Yesterday, I shared a video of our twelve yard mulch delivery and my plans to spread it around our property as part of my (new) social distancing project plans.  One of the areas that I mentioned in that post as a 'net new' bed was in the area by our tree swing - what I've billed as " Priority Area 2 " earlier this Spring.  Here's a new look at that area from our bedroom (zoomed in) that shows how I've take what was once a mulch island (just a ring of mulch around that big Oak) to more of a continuous bed. I took the tree ring - that you can mostly still see and extended the bed all the way to the right where one of our large Chanticleer Pear trees is located.  And to the left, I created a whole new bed that was a mix of thin grass, weeds and, frankly...leaf mulch.  Have a look at this post - featuring that River Birch behind the Oak tree - to see what I'm talking about.  This area was some grass, some weeds and never really defined in any way

In the latest Garden Design email that went out last week , I saw a photo of a patio that was beautiful.  But, also gave me a little bit of wondering as to what we can do with our current patio.  Oh, you're not getting the Garden Design email?  Head here and subscribe .  It is free and - for me - is the email newsletter that I read and click on everytime it arrives.  No skimming for me. In the newsletter, she linked to this story about outdoor living space and included this photo of someone's dreamy patio that faces what look the marshland that borders the Cloister at Sea Island.  Here's that photo with a couple of MY red circles calling attention to something: Not my photo.  Original source can be found here . In those two red rings, I've highlighted some patio-border shrubbery.  What I think are probably boxwoods or yews or something similar.  The oval on the right snows a patio corner installation that I want to focus on here.  Now...that looks like someth

Back in the Fall, the KotBT had a birthday and one of the gifts that we gave him was a window bird feeder.  The kind that use suction cups to attach to the window.  The one we have is this one from Amazon that they say is their #1 best seller in the category .  We have a variety feeders already - including a fly-through , a couple of suet cages , one of the smaller Squirrel Busters  and a squirrel 'big ole' cob' bungee feeder .  But, those are all set out in the yard a bit.  In a spot where we can see them and observe the critters/birds, but also far enough to have any critters not want to make a home close to our house/patio. These window feeders have been around forever and I've been skeptical of them.  I mean...birds get spooked by people.  And...from what I know, they don't love windows and the reflections off of them.  So, mounting a feeder on the window seems like a long shot in terms of getting any action on it. We talked about putting it in various pl

A couple of days ago, I shared a photo of the new caliper measurement tool that Nat picked up for me on Amazon so I can get some better measurement of our young trees in the yard.  I have been tracking the heights of my newly added trees to the yard for the past couple of years (here's this Summer's measurements and here's last Summer measurements ), but some of the trees are getting more than ten feet tall and using a conventional tape measure to accurate reflect their growth is difficult.  Between not being able to reach (and be at eye level) with the very top of the tree and the reality to some of the tree's 'growth' isn't always in height, but in branching out and what-have-you. Like I've done with the heights (which...for many of the trees, I'll still do during the late Summer), I'm going to document caliper measurements on a regular basis.  I'm thinking that I'll do a semi-annual measurement this year (now + Summer) to see if th

With the calendar turning over to the new year soon, my mind has naturally drifted outdoors to our backyard to think about what kind of 'tree planning' we should be doing in Spring.  Right after Christmas, I posted my front yard tree succession planting plan .  And because we've been filling our bird feeder, my mind has been focused on the area you see in the photo above.  I've covered this section of yard before with this Fall of 2017 post showing the landscape plan here . Of note, what I'm showing here differs from what the plan includes, but that's because the plan doesn't call for many new trees, but instead uses the existing trees and augments them with shrubs. To set the context - or edges - of this image, you can see two trees that I've posted about before. First, in purple, on the left is the Weeping White Spruce Columnar tree . And, in red, on the far right is the Weeping Cedar tree that I planted and lost .  I've left the corpse

Yesterday, I posted a photo of the large Oak tree that we use for our tree swing and today, I'm posting another larger tree in our yard that is pre-losing its leaves:  one of our Catalpa trees.  We have four of them and there are actually three in this photo.  The large one in the middle of course coupled with a Walnut tree on the left that has lost all of its leaves already.  But, tucked on in on either side of the Walnut tree?  A pair of small Catalpa trees: You may or may not know Catalpa trees, as I didn't either until we moved in and inherited these.  They're a pretty unique tree because they are considered what I would call an 'All of the above' tree .  That means they're a shade tree.  And a flowering tree.  And an ornamental tree.  They flower in the late Spring and have beans in the Fall.  And the leaves are H-U-G-E.  I like a lot about these trees, but I don't think that I've ever come across them in the nursery. They're native,

At the beginning of the season this year, I planted three small Gold Cone Juniper shrubs .  And they took off with the wet Spring and put on a great show .  After reading all about these particular juniper shrubs, I decided to 'wire them up' to ensure that they don't suffer from splaying based on snow fall in the Winter.  By June, I had wired them up and they looked great .  Then, we hit the hot part of Summer with July and August.  And the shrubs are showing signs of stress.  I'm posting this photo in the [ garden diary ] here on the blog to show the emerging brown spots on some of the shrub.  It is on the 'backside' mostly, so I'm wondering if it is both water/drought-related, but perhaps also sun-related?  The backside gets less sun than the front.  I also wonder if the 'wiring up' caused some of the stress?    I've done this dance before in the Fall - are the trees/shrubs that are showing signs of stress going to make it through the Wi

Back in May of this year, I shared my plans to plant some Dahlia tubers directly in the ground in one of our landscape beds along the south property line.  That post is here .   In that post, I described the two varieties - one being a semi-cactus and the other being a dinner plate. Specifically I planted three Big Brother Dinner plate Dahlias . And, I planted three Color Spectacle Semi-Cactus Dahlia s. Please go click those links.  And make sure my eyes aren't fooling me.  They're both orange, right?  Like, totally orange.  The packages of both show orange flowers.  And...I love orange flowers.  Well, I like orange most things.  But, have a special soft-spot for orange flowers.  Now, scroll back to the top of this post.  That's a couple of the Big Brother Dinner plate flowers about to burst open.  And now, check out the photo below.  That's one of the Color Spectacle flowers starting to open up. They're, ummm, not orange.  Right?  Those are tota

That's a wheelbarrow full of 12 2# Upright Hicks Yews that are destined for our backyard.  #5 on my 2019 Garden To-Do List was to get some Yews into our yard with a hedge and now that I've waited for these to go on sale, I'm this much closer to getting this item crossed off my list.  What's the inspiration for these?  This curvy, swooping hedge from Bunny Williams' Instagram .    I bought Yews that were originally marked for $34.99 that Home Depot discounted all the way down to $9. I bought Upright Hicks Yews - which Monrovia describes thusly : An excellent evergreen shrub for tall hedges and privacy screens. The long, upright-growing branches with dense, glossy, dark green foliage naturally form a narrow, columnar habit that works well as a foundation plant, or placed in pairs at entries or doorways.  I've talked about my love of all things columnar - and that love extends to shrubs. The spacing on the back of the card claims 8' to 12', bu

After coming home with some peonies from Trader Joe's a few weeks back, Natalie asked me why we didn't have any peonies in our yard?  After all, we had a bunch of them back in Elmhurst that had established themselves enough to flower pretty productively every year.  Here's a look at some of them from 2015 .  That forced me to get outside and try to find the various peony plants that we have on hand and to start to chronicle them here on the blog.  These photos are a few weeks old, but sharing to start the diary entries on these. First...let me remind you all (and myself) that we still have the most important peony plant out in Foster Care in Naperville.  It grew pretty well last year and I'm thinking that it has likely flowered this season.  Time to move it, soon, I believe.    But, this post isn't about fostered plants.  It is about the five peony plants that we currently have on site.  The first one is above and was the only one that flowered.  All of thes

I'm calling this one:  our Snow Fountains Weeping Cherry tree is dead.  Didn't make it to year two.  I planted this tree on Earth Day 2018 , so it is just outside of the one-year warranty window.    And the tree was looking good in April as it had set buds last Fall.    I wasn't ever really satisfied with the location, so having it die isn't the end of the world. Using the list from my most recent Weeping White Spruce post , this is the sixth tree that I've lost since we started planting and the first one lost this season. Other "Lost" trees include:  a Chanticleer Pear, a Dawn Redwood, a Corkscrew Willow, a Fraser Fir, a Canadian Hemlock and now this Weeping Flowering Cherry. Here's the full list of trees that we've put into the yard since we bought the property in 2016 and moved in during the Summer of 2017. 35 trees planted. 29 trees currently alive and adding to our landscape. 2017 (9 planted. 3 Died. 6 of the original annual to

Of all the various tree-related posts here on the blog, the Dawn Redwood might have the most action in terms of posting.  I first bought our initial Dawn Redwood back in May of 2017 and planted it in our new backyard in Downers Grove.   By October of 2017, I was concerned that the tree was not going to survive .  And I was right.  It didn't come back.   So, I replaced it with a tree from an online nursery and planted it in July .  Not the best time to plant a new, young tree, right?  But, by Fall, it was showing signs of growth and it had seemingly weathered the tough, stressful planting.  Mid-November of last year, the deciduous needles had turned all brown (as they are SUPPOSED TO DO!) ahead of the hard Winter.  Finally, my most recent post on this tree was on April 1st of this year where I shared a photo of some of the buds that had set last Fall about to burst open with new growth .  The issue is that back on our initial Dawn Redwood, we too, had buds that had set, b

Last week, I posted photos of the new Gold Cone Junipers that I bought at Menards .  I'll get around to posting some photos once I get them into the ground in the coming days.  But, that post talked about the need to add some spiral wire around the trees to ensure that they can take the snowload and stop them from splaying during the Winter.  In that post , I mentioned that I needed to add to the 'addendum' that lengthens my 2019 garden To-Do List that included wiring up these Junipers. That got me wondering what else would be on my addendum list. Let's get started and I'm guessing I'll revisit this list to add more items over the Spring and Summer. Addendum To-Do List for 2019 Gardening Season.   Original List here .   1.  Relocate some of the Fall bulbs including these Tulips along the South Fence line in the backyard .   If I move these 'forward', I can extend that bed and add something taller in the back. 2.  After I plant the tree Gold C

Back in the Fall of 2017 (our first fall), I planted 30 tulip bulbs along the fenceline in our backyard in between the section where our espalier system is set up and where we are growing a series of hydrangeas.  They popped up for the first time in March of 2018 and I documented that here .  And by Mid-May they had bloomed in a beautiful combination of orange and yellow .  I mentioned last year that I thought it was going to be best to relocate these bulbs, but guess what?  I never got around to moving them.  This post claims that the *best* time to transplant tulip bulbs is the late Fall - about the same time that I put these in the ground.  From the post : The best time to transplant tulips is in the late fall, according to Ron Smith, Horticulturist at the North Dakota State University Extension Service. In the fall, bulbs have completed their growing cycle and lie dormant. Moving dormant tulips doesn't interrupt the growing cycle and makes the bulbs less susceptible to

Another day, another look at a tree's buds that have set in our #newoldbackyard.  Yesterday, I posted a photo of the buds from our Dawn Redwood tree and today is a look at the Weeping Cherry in the far reaches of our yard.   I haven't posted much about this tree on the blog, but that's not because it isn't interesting.  This was one of the three trees we planted for Earth Day 2018 and is formally named the Snow Fountains Weeping Cherry .    We planted it in the rear of our property and it appeared to have some positive growth in the first year.  Looking at the buds that were set in the photo of this post, I'm thinking we'll have another bloom this year as the tree appears to have established itself.  This is the second flowering Cherry tree we have - the first is a Kwanzan Cherry Tree - that I bought after my first trip to Tokyo.  This is a grafted tree and it has a shoot from the trunk that has emerged that I haven't removed yet, that tells me tha

Last Summer, I had to replace the Dawn Redwood tree that had died in our yard.  This was the very first tree that we planted in 2017 before we moved in to our new house.   I noticed that first Fall that the tree was in trouble and posted a photo wondering if it was going to make the Winter.    It didn't. So, last year we replaced it.  And baby'd it all Summer.  It was reacting positively and we saw some new growth all the way through October - which was a good sign.  Then, I did a final check-in on the tree in November where we saw all of the needles still clinging to the branches.  Today, the limbs are covered with little buds that you can see in the photo above.  Good sign of life, right?  I also picked up a little trick that helps ascertain if a tree is healthy and alive:  you take your fingernail and scrape off a tiny bit of bark.  If you see 'green', you're in good shape.  For this Dawn Redwood after the scrape?  Green.  Could this be the Spring w

Back on Earth Day 2017, we planted a small Dawn Redwood tree in our backyard .  This was in the middle of construction of our house and we weren't even living there.  I figured, we'd get the tree in and give it a little bit of a head start.  The only problem...since I didn't tend to it for the first few months, it didn't do well. By October of last year, I was questioning if the tree was going to make it.  Take a look at the photo here to see how bare it was by mid-October . And ultimately died.   So, we replaced it this year .  Same spot, but more care in terms of water. And by October of *this* year, the tree wasn't bare.  But instead was sprouting some new growth . And now?  See the photo at the top of this post?  The entire tree has turned a bronze color and appears poised to drop all of it's needles very soon.  Which, based on what I've seen on other deciduous conifers is appropriate behavior. The tree also appears to have set some buds for

Back in May of this year, we planted a hedge of seven Frans Fontaine European Hornbeam trees along the fenceline on the northside of our property right outside of our screened porch.  These are trees that I had researched and dreamed about since we moved in .  Prior to their installation, I documented what the 'view' was like of the space where they were going in April (when there was still a little bit of snow on the ground) and then again in late May , right before they were planted. I tried to baby them all Summer and with the help of a couple of soaker hoses, I tried to keep them happy and hydrated. I most recently visited these trees in late August when I posted this photo of the 'late Summer' view of the hedge.  I've noticed that all seven of the trees have handled their transplant differently.  Some of them have done just fine.  A few have even shot up leaders at the top.  One of them seems to be growing wider at the top than others, which is intere