Why I Oughta...

All the way back in the late Summer of 2017, Nat's Mom sent us a Disneyland Rose as an anniversary present.  It was our first rose and I planted it in a bed that had basically nothing in it - right outside of our kitchen windows.  But, it was quickly clear that this was in the wrong spot.   The following Fall ( 2018 ), we acquired two more Disneyland Roses , but this time, I planted them in on the southside of our house, along the foundation.  And, they've fared pretty well.  But the initial one, planted in the wrong spot wasn't doing as well.  By last Summer, the Disneyland Rose was being crowded out by grasses, hostas and well, weeds .   So, this year, a portion of #6 on my 2021 to-do list was to transplant the rose to be over by the other ones.   I did a little bit of research on the timing and prep for transplanting a floribunda rose and figured out a couple of things:   1.  Do it in late winter/early spring.  When the ground is soft enough to work the hole. 2.  Pre-d

We have three rose bushes in our yard.  Two in our sideyard - with southern exposure and one planted in a rear bed outside of our kitchen.  They are all the same cultivar:  Disneyland Roses .  I don't know much about roses, but I'm learning.  It turns out, Disneyland Roses are Floribunda Roses.  There are a bunch of varieties of roses including tea, hybrid tea, Grandiflora and - what the Disneylad Roses are - Floribunda Roses. Sunnyside Nursery has a post titled "What The Heck Is The Difference Between Hybrid Tea, Grandiflora & Floribunda Roses? " that lays out the basics. Knowing I only have this one cultivar, I've begun to educate myself on the care of Floribunda roses.    According to HeirloomRoses.com , Floribunda Roses give you "Minimum upkeep with maximum color".  They detail what makes a Floribunda Rose unique here : The Floribunda Rose is a crossbred flower that is loved for its hardiness in harsh climates, minimal upkeep, and its ability to

For Mother's Day this year, Nat's Mom gave her a small Flowering Tobacco Jasmine plant that came in a little plastic capsule.  There was very little instructions with it other than that it was potentially poisonous (see ASPCA page on it being poisonous to dogs here !).  Nat's Mom has given us a few Disneyland Roses ( first one in 2017 and two more in 2018 ) and a couple of hydrangeas , but this is the first annual that she's gifted us. I wasn't sure where to put it, so I ended up sticking it on the side of our house on the southside - near where I put the 2018 Disneyland roses and was planning to do a Belgian Fence.  I didn't pay it much attention and didn't even water it consciously.  And look at it above:  beautifully tall and graceful.  But, this isn't just a looker.  Nope.  It does a couple of things that are interesting.  First...it transforms from day to evening.  The listing on Select Seeds calls it a "night bloomer" .  Then it

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

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

The two varieties of orange Dahlias that I posted about a few days ago aren't the only flower that we planted recently.  The Dahlias aren't bulbs, technically.  They're tubers.  The flowers (or...hopefully soon-to-be flowers) here in this photo are 30 Gladiolus.  Turns out, Gladiolus aren't bulbs, either.  They're technically corms.  What the heck is a corm?  I had no idea, but I found this post that walks you through bulbs vs. corms vs. tubers .  These are the first corms that we've planted and the first time I've planted gladiolus.  I don't know why, but they've never been something that I've been drawn to over the years despite the fact that growing up I attend the Glad-Peach Festival in Coloma every year.  There were always tons of gladiolus.  But not that many peaches.  The Bird helped me plant there and I put them all in the bed between the last and the second to last Hornbeam on the North fenceline.  I decided to not plant them in

Back in September of 2017, I posted about a Disneyland Rose plant that Nat's Mom gave us for our anniversary.  In that post, I shared the background on the variety and how it came to be back in 2004.  I ended up planting that first Disneyland Rose plant near the rear foundation outside of our kitchen window and hoped for the best.  It weathered the first Winter and came to bloom for the first time last Summer and I posted about that in June of 2018 . Then, for our Anniversary in 2018, Nat's Mom sent us two more Disneyland Rose plants that I stuck in the side foundation beds on the Southside of our house between our house and our neighbor. So, imagine my delight when we were visiting the Disneyland Resort and we came across a large bed near the gateway entry point along Harbor Drive.  Here's the Google Maps overview that shows the area where this bed is located: This location means that everybody at one of the "good neighbor" hotels/motels that walks to