Why I Oughta...

This photo is from Tuesday, April 20th.  When, we had snow.  And two straight nights of below freezing temperatures in Northern Illinois.  I was totally unprepared for these temperatures, but thanks to Nat's quick thinking, we grabbed a couple of sheets of floating row cover from Amazon that had 'Same Day' delivery.  I unrolled them, covered a bunch of things that I've recently moved (the Fanal Astilbes, a bunch of random Peonies, some new ferns and hostas and an impulse-bought Japanese Maple.   You can see the snow coming down in the photo below: I went out the following morning (when the temperature was still below 30 degrees) and found my tulip blooms looking not so happy: I'm guessing that we'll have a much shorter season of tulip flowers this season, but by the afternoon - when the temperatures had risen to the upper 40's, they mostly seemed to bounce back.  Some of the flower petals had dropped, but nothing like what happened with the Saucer Magnolia o

This post is another in the series of documenting the Spring re-emergence of the various plants that I bought at last Fall's Morton Arboretum Plant Sale.  I first shared photos of the trio of Twinkle Toes Lungwort that emerged first in mid-March.  Yesterday, I posted some photos of the Chocoholic Black Snakeroot that has some lovely lacy leaves that are standing on top of purple stems in this first Spring.   Today, I'm posting a photo (below) about the All Gold Japanese Forest Grasses that I planted in the backyard around the Tree Swing Oak tree.  Formally named Hakonechloa macra "All Gold", there are six of these planted (mostly) in a drift between the tree and the fenceline interplanted with some hostas. Here's one of them peeking thru the mulch (and the wood chips that I added in late Fall): In the photo below, you can see where these six are planted - currently mixed in with some of the tulip bulbs that I planted last Fall. It is hard to tell (exactly) wher

 I bought a total of eleven All Gold Japanese Grasses from the Fall Plant Sale and put them in the ground in two locations with the aim of making two distinct masses of these grasses.  I put five in the front yard - and I'll post about that shortly.  And, I put six in the ground in the backyard - in between the largest Flowering Pear tree and the 31" Red Oak Tree on the north side.  These are in 'front' of the Apple Tree Belgian Fence .  You can see that location in the photo below: The grasses might be hard to pick out, so below, you can find an annotated version of that photo showing the location of these six grasses interplanted with some hostas and our lone Azalea.  This is a brand new - this year - bed.  You can see it as bare mulch here .   I supplemented the soil around these six with a couple of bags of composted manure to try to enrich the soil and give the grasses a good headstart.  I'm going to water these in every few days this Fall to keep them establ