Why I Oughta...

This year, all eight of our Frans Fontaine European Columnar Hornbeams are exhibiting  marcescence :  the retention of dead plant organs that normally are shed.  And that's by design.  Or at least...that's part of the reason why I was drawn to these particular columnar trees.  They'll provide some additional Winter screening by keeping most of their leaves on the limbs.  These look quite a bit different than a year ago - and you can see 12 months ago here - as one of them (the fourth from the left) dropped its leaves and these have widened out a bit.    The photo above is from a different angle, but this photo below shows that same angle from a year ago.  All of them appear to be thicker and a bit taller, too. But if you also look closely at the photos above, you might notice that there is quite a bit of brown leaves at the bases of the trees.  That's something I'm trying new this year:  using leaf mulch.  I used my mower to pick up some of the leaves aroun

A week or so ago, I posted some photos of a large Willow Oak tree from a  visit to a corporate headquarters and referenced some other landscaping there (the cloud-like hedge ).  The campus is surrounded by a TPC golf course named Southwind and has quite a few mature trees.  They also have done a nice job of creating some educational material and signage about some of the trees they have on hand including this Bald Cypress or "Baldcypress" as the sign indicates. We have a tiny Bald Cypress - or Baldy Cypress - out front on the north side of our driveway.  According to my inventory this Summer, it grew just 1" in height . But...back to the sign:  the second sentence reads: "The raised conical knees, part of the root system, are believed to help the roots attain oxygen." Raised knees?!  What the heck?  I had never heard of Cypress Knees.  But...looking around the tree - and sure enough - there were a bunch of these surface roots: More Cypress Knee

No...not that kind of weed tree .  I'm talking about a weed tree that has grown up and isn't really much of a desirable tree.  Or, is it a Walnut tree?  You can see the trunk being very tall and thin.  The tree is twelve or so feet tall and has a set of leaves that look just like Walnut tree leaves.  We have quite a few large Walnut trees around the yard, so it isn't beyond reason that a Walnut would have rooted and grown into a tree, I would think? The leaves of Walnut trees are "alternate compound" or "pinnate leaves" and so, too. are the leaves of this tree. I know a little bit of the Black Locust tree - which is (I think) a "weed tree".  It has similar shaped leaves, but the tips are rounded where these are pointy.  It is "not recommended" by the Morton Arboretum .   I'm pretty confident that the tree in question - in the red circle - is NOT a black locust.   But, is it a Black Walnut tree?   Here's a clo

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,

Last Summer, I documented the 'mighty' Oak Tree that we inherited in our backyard here on the blog in June.  As we're moving to late October, I wanted to post here the view - looking northeast - of the same tree and canopy before it drops all of its leaves.  This was a Mast Year and it dropped thousands of acorns, but like always, the leaves are clinging on to "fall" what seems to be the last leaves in the yard every year. There's no way to know how old this tree is, but I know we lop'd off some limbs before we built and opened up the tree a bit.  That means that this year, we saw quite a bit of growth on the large limbs to 'puff them up' a bit with new branches/leaf clumps.  The tips grew just fine, but that exposure of new parts of the central limbs has allowed the tree to fatten up a bit more this season.

Early Fall brings sad news in the backyard:  my little Emerald Falls Weeping Cedar is gone.  I can comfortably call it now.  Planted in May of 2018 , it was a tree that I'd been dreaming about for a while.  I baby'd it all last Summer and by the end of August of 2018, it was looking plump and happy .  Then we had a hard Winter.  And the tree was stressed this Spring.  I was looking for any positive sign - even thinking that young, immature cedar trees occasionally turn brown - but that ended up being a true sign of stress.    But by May, it was fighting on: showing signs of new growth and pushing the brown out to the extremities.  Alas, after watering it with a soaker hose this Summer, you can see the pile of needles laying on the ground there.  This one is dead.  And in the tracking of things, this Weeping Cedar is the third tree I've lost this season.  Other ones are:  a small Canadian Hemlock and the Weeping Flowering Cherry tree .  And eighth total tree tha

The last time we checked in on this large caliper Chanticleer Flowering Pear tree that is planted close to our front driveway was last Fall when it was totally off-cycle.  It flowered in early November .  But, I took that (oddly-timed) indicator as a potential sign of progress.  Looking back at this same tree in June of last year, I think that this year the tree is healthier.  It isn't perfect as there are still plenty of thin spots and some dead tips.  But, look at the photo from last year .  The leaves are a different color.   Darker green.  Seemingly more healthy, right? The culprit was the clay bowl that this tree was planted in and how it was drowning the tree.  At least...that's what I *think* was happening.  I dug out part of the tree on the low-side of the planting bowl and then used a post-hole digger to dig through the clay layer to make a kind-of drainage spot so the water had a place to run.  After I did this excavation project, it didn't take long for the

Another week and (sadly) another tree is lost in our yard.  Just last week, I shared the news of one of our Earth Day 2018 trees - a Weeping Flowering Cherry Tree - died this season .  Today, you can see in the photo above, that we've lost one of our small Canadian Hemlock trees that I planted on the North side of our property out back. This is the seventh tree I've lost since planting and the second of this season. The other six trees that have died are: Other "Lost" trees include: a Chanticleer Pear, a Dawn Redwood, a Corkscrew Willow, a Fraser Fir, a Canadian Hemlock, Weeping Flowering Cherry. And now *this* Hemlock.  This means it is the second Canadian Hemlock that I've planted that has died.   The dead (or mostly dead) Hemlock in the photo above is the one on the far right of the photo in this post.   The other five of them seem to be doing well with all of them showing both a little stress and some new growth. Here's the full list of tr

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

Another day, another tree that we planted in the yard.  This one, while isn't technically in the "dwarf" category, is another purposely-small tree:  A Hakuro Nishiki Dappled Willow Tree.  Welp....this is actually - according to the tag - a "Deciduous Shrub", but in Tree Form.  So, I'm calling it a tree.  I'm pretty sure that this is a grafted tree, but I can't really tell where it was grafted.  I'll post some closer photos if I can find the graft spot/line in the tree.   But, since this is a tree, this is #35 in terms of planting since we bought the property in 2017.  This is a tree that we had (and I bought it on a whim) back at our old house in Elmhurst.  We planted it on the northside of our backwalk, adjacent to the garage.  It was a stunner.   I loved how it looked.  Nat loved it, too.  It shoots out these beautiful - and almost celebratory - willow limbs that are full of color. Pinks, greens, whites.      I don't have a post

This marks the eighth tree that I've added to our backyard this season - and all eight of them (so far) have been conifers.  This one being a Dwarf Alberta Spruce tree.  The most recent tree that I planted was this Weeping White Spruce tree earlier this month .    Those of you who have kept up with things around here, you may remember that #8 on my to-do list for the season was to plant some conifers .   These eight trees are all small (tiny Hemlocks, especially!), but this is the first "dwarf" tree in the yard.   But, all of them are conifers.  This one was picked out by the Bird for her "Earth Day Tree" this year, but it took us more than a month to get into the ground.    And it is planted right adjacent to last year's tree that she planted - a Chanticleer Pear flowering tree .   So, eight conifer trees.  Plus three conifer shrubs - when we added these Gold Cone Junipers to the other side of the property .  Just yesterday, I showed off the brigh