Why I Oughta...

Yesterday, I updated my pizza oven project with the latest progress on the small, timber retaining wall that I've been building in front of the oven.  The goal is to create a small, flat surface that I can use to work/bake in front of the oven.  The grade required a small wall and after hemming-and-hawing on what to do, I opted for action:  get the oven operational. Yesterday's post showed how I set the timbers and backfilled with TONS of gravel for drainage .    The next step in the process is to fold over the non-woven landscape fabric on top of the gravel - this fabric serves as a 'separation layer' from the soil that is behind the gravel.  It also is the separation layer to the soil I intend to pile on top.  Below is a look at the fabric folded back on the gravel: After the fabric was in place, I started to dig out the large pile of earth that I excavated for this project and began to fill in the space.  After a few inches, I compacted the so...

The last post I shared about the pizza oven was back in late March when I shared a photo showing the first four timbers being brought on-site and talked about I was in-the-middle of the excavation.  In that post , I laid out the next few steps (pasted below).  Since that post in late March, I've progressed through the first seven steps and the first part (the hard part) of Step 8.  1. Clear back/sides down grade. 2. Dig out under timbers to drywell stone. 3. Lay out Fabric. 4. Lay down gravel + paver base to create level base for bottom timbers. 5. Start with the timber at the base of the slab, level it out and anchor in the ground with rebar. 6. Work around the timbers - anchoring them with rebar. 7. Stack additional timbers - attach with timberloks. 8. Backfill with gravel, drape the fabric over. 9. Back fill with earth. 10. Fill center with base + gravel. As a reminder, we have a large, deep drywell under this part of the yard.  When I dug the slab foun...

Last season, I did a number of 'garden edits' - where I improved parts of our beds via selective editing.  In some cases, that meant adding MORE of something.  Or in other cases, it meant replacing hostas with something more appealing.  One of those 'garden edits' was the nook behind the Weeping Cypress tree on the north side of the far backyard .   I pulled out a bunch of hostas and replaced it with a few things: A row of Sun King Golden Japanese Spikenard - Aralia cordata . Some transplanted Summer Beauty Alliums A row of Dark Side of the Moon Astibles - along with transplanting a few that I already had on-hand. And, fronted with some groundcover. My #4 item on my 2025 to-do list is to 'finish the garden edits'.  I mentioned that I was pretty sure a bunch of the stuff I planted back here wasn't going to come back.  It had a hard Summer and I've been thinking that the Sun King Aralias and the Astilbes didn't have enough time to establish themselve...

I started my new garden with Summer Beauty Alliums.  They're really great.  Since then, I've found something I like a tiny-bit better:  Serendipity Alliums.  They bloom later in the year.  And for longer .   (Turns out, there's a third variety - Millenium - that sort-of fits in between these two .) Over the years, I've grown and divided both Summer Beauty and Serendipity and placed them around the garden.  Each of the past few Falls, I've divided the Serendipity clumps.  Starting with two, I now have five .  All IB2DWs.   Now, I'm drawn towards the Serendipity due to the bloom time and length, I still have a bunch of Summer Beauties in the garden.  And, guess what?  They're early Spring stars.  A bunch of my garden hasn't woken-up yet.  Hostas are in the ground.  Peonies are just little red tips.  Astilbes and ferns are showing their first few shoots.   But allium clumps?  Their gree...

Last week, I pulled out a small London Planetree that we had planted in our parkway .  The tree suffered from drought last year and didn't come back this Spring.  No buds set, no green under the bark.   Replacing it was a no-brainer when I came across that Black Tupelo tree that I posted about yesterday .   Just because this Black Tupelo was a $20 tree - sold by a Big Box store, I'm one to follow the advice of Ralph Snodsmith and gave this 50-cent plant tree a $5 hole .  Because I dug up the dead London Planetree, the digging here was easy. I dug a wide and deep hole and then backfilled it in to make sure the rootball was placed not-too low.  These big box store trees always have their root-flare buried.  So, it is easy to plant them too low.  Right now, the root-flare is under some soil.  But....in terms of position the ball, I kept this one up 'high enough' to where - if/when the trunk develops, the rootflare will be 'above' the ...

The annual return of these red, sharp-pointed tips are a welcome sing of Spring.  These are (below) a couple of clumps of peonies that are emerging in the beds (kitchen curved) in our backyard.  They're emerging later than last year - here's same peonies about a month earlier in 2024 .   Note the Milorganite in the photo below.  I hand-spread a full 40-pound bag of Milroganite recently on all the beds ahead of the application of mulch.  I've had mixed results with peonies in our current garden.  First, starting them in the way back - too much shade.  And, subsequently moving them over the years.   They are Nat's favorite flower and her first love.  (She wrote a blog called 'i heart peonies'.) So, growing them is important.  But, finding the right home to make that happen has taken years.  These two peonies are younger than the one out front - IB2DWs.  That one produced the MOST flowers and really popped-off last year ...

A couple days ago, I showed how we planted two new, bareroot Disneyland Roses (Floribunda roses) in the sideyard along-side the three existing Disneyland Roses .  In that post, I talked about how I was hopeful that the three legacy roses would come back this year - despite a TOUGH 2024.  They had leaf-drop, pests (sawfly larvae) and disease.  So, I wasn't sure if they were going to make it. But, Spring is the most hopeful time in the gardening calendar.  And, that's because there are signs of rebirth all around us.  These Disneyland Roses are the latest case.  All three legacy roses are showing signs of life with red-ish tips and green growth.    Below are some photos showing the three legacy roses and their new, seasonal growth: And more good news is that the two recently-planted bareroot Disneyland Roses are *also* showing new, seasonal growth with red buds emerging on the green canes.  See below for a top-down view of both of these new p...

I seem to have failed to post photos and details of the dormant pruning that I did earlier this year on the pair of SugarTyme Crabapple trees that are trained into horizontal cordon espalier on the south side of our house.  The last time I posted about these was in September 2024 when the trees were going ham with new growth and tons of foliage .  At that time, I talked about the need to prune back both of these this Winter and noted how the tree on the right was growing faster/stronger/bigger than the one on the right. I pruned both of them while the trees were dormant, but I seem to have only take a photo when I had pruned back *just* the tree on the left and before I started with the one on the right.  That photo is below: I ended up pruning both back, of course.  And, they're now breaking bud with early foliage.  Below is a photo from this week (mid-April) showing the first sets of leaves emerging on both trees.   The photo above shows a few detail...

Here we go:  twenty-five items on my 'to-do list' for 2025.  Just like the past few years, this list includes twenty-five garden ideas, projects, plans and priorities.  Here's 2024's to-do list .  And scorecard (18 out of 25 complete ).  Here's 2023 to-do list .  And scorecard (22 of 25 complete ). Here's 2022's to-do list .  And scorecard (20 of 25 complete).   Last year, the seven that I didn't complete include leaf mulch, working the lawn, parkway planting, building an orangerie box, improving the southside entrance landing, being a weeder and paying attention to my tree nursery.   A few of those will persist and show up in the 25 below. 1. Gravel Path Improvement. This was marked as 'Priority Project #1' this year . And, I've already completed about 60% of the renovation . Once I finalize the pizza oven project, I'll use the remaining nonwoven fabric to finish the gravel path. 2. Make the Pizza Oven operational. This was marke...

We started with one Disneyland Rose back in the Fall of 2017 and grew the collection to three by 2022.  In Spring 2023, I was gifted three more bare root Disneyland Roses for my birthday and I planted them in the front porch bed under the Triumph Elm tree .  All three of those 'new' roses didn't come back in 2024 - and that's where I planted a few Dahlia tubers.   The three Disneyland Roses planted in the sideyard struggled last year.  Between pests and drought, they had limited production during the 2024 growing season .  I failed to water them enough during the early part of the season, but baby'd them later in the year.   This year, for Christmas, I was gifted two MORE Disneyland roses.  They, too, are bare root.  They arrived via UPS in a box and were well-packed.  The roots were still covered in wet paper, so they didn't dry-out during the travel.  Below is a photo showing the packing of the two Disneyland Roses from Jack...

Our three-bin compost bin setup includes a finishing bin (on the right), a mixed bin (in the middle) and a holding/storage bin (on the left).  You can see those three in the photo below - along with the 'FEED ME' Compost bin sign hanging on the holding bin on the left.  Also note, on the right - finishing bin - the new cedar planks that I added last Fall to the bottom to help hold in the finished material: Last Fall, I filled the two non-finishing bins with gathered leaves and other garden waste .  Over the Winter, I've been adding our kitchen scraps to the holding bin .  Also, Nat got a new coffee machine that produces A TON of grounds, so the bin is filling up with spent grounds.  And, most recently, this early Spring, I've been putting our garden waste like turf, seed heads, etc - other than the 'chop and drop' material - in the holding bin.  You can see that piled on top of the leaves.   I'll plan on turning these bins later this year - some...

In the photo below you can see a number of 'crowns' or slightly different colored dots that are scattered around this bed.  What are those?  Ostrich Fern crowns.  They're filling up the bed behind the Oak tree - tree swing tree.  And, they've naturalized.  They're spreading and multiplying.  It feels like this is a moment:  keep or dig up and remove.   As I mentioned...they multiply.  So, this year there might be twenty.  Next year...there might be 40.    The issue:  I don't have anything to replace them.  But, despite falling in love with Ostrich Ferns, I've moved on to other ferns.  Autumn Ferns, in particular.  But, those don't naturalize.   This is where I've always envisioned a 'garden path'.  Perhaps I leave these now (don't do a "Fern Upgrade") and utilize non-woven cloth to smother out any Ostrich ferns in the way. 

Yesterday, I posted a couple photos of the Louie Pine tree - a gold-needled standout in the garden. Next to the Louies on the pallet in the parking lot of the orange big box nursery were a few Charlie-Brown-like pines.  They were tall, thin and...scraggly.   A closer look reveals they're Weeping Pine Trees.  See below for some photos - of the trees and the tag.  Retailing for $99.00, these are about 40" tall from the root flare.  These are true weeping trees - and need to be trained.  From Gertens : A weeping and trailing shrub or small tree, very unlike the species; features soft, blue needles, tends to crawl along the ground and over rocks or walls, or forms a small weeping accent plant if trained on a standard; beautiful if properly grown. Weeping White Pine is a dwarf conifer which is primarily valued in the landscape or garden for its highly ornamental weeping form. It has attractive bluish-green evergreen foliage. The needles are highly ornamenta...