Why I Oughta...

We made a stop at the Potbelly's in Willowbrook right off of Route 83 for lunch recently and sat underneath this poster that you see below.  It advertises the DuPage County Centennial Flower Show in Hinsdale on June 9,10, 11.  At the bottom it reads: "Presented by the Home Gardeners of DuPage County".    It is in a lovely vintage frame. And, if you look even closer at the bottom, you'll see this copy that speaks to how the poster was created:  "Made by WPA Federal Art Project, Chicago, Illinois".  See below for a closeup of that section:  Pretty cool, right?  I mean...what could be better than a vintage poster that is both LOCAL and about something that I'm into (gardening).   A quick spin around the Web and it wasn't hard to figure out the provenance of this poster. The Library of Congress has a listing for it and even dates it: Jun 22 1939. I'm guessing that's the day it was added to the collection, so my hunch is that it was sent ...

 Earlier this week, I received this text message letting me know that my ballot was received by the Clerk's office at DuPage County and has 'been processed'.  It came via the BallotTrax system that they are using for mail-in voting this year.   Have to say that the system is pretty great and gave me a lot of confidence that my ballot both was on the way to me AND that it had been received by the County for counting. BallotTrax bills itself like this : BallotTrax is designed to track mail ballots and absentee ballots through the postal stream and proactively push ballot status notifications to voters, thus increasing election visibility and vendor accountability.  By integrating with State and/or County election offices, print vendors and USPS, BallotTrax knows when a ballot has been printed and mailed to a voter, returned from a voter, received by the election office and accepted for counting by the election office. I've made it pretty clear that I don't love go...

With the close of one convention and the start of another one next week, I suppose it is time to remind anyone who is reading this blog post that, if they live in DuPage County, they should get on the stick and request their mail-in ballot.   The county has made it pretty easy - just head here to the DuPage Election Authority's page where you fill out a form with your name, Date of Birth and SSN .   The County Clerk also sent out this mailer that explains what they have planned for this year - and included instructions on the application.  But, she's also touting that - at some point later this year - you'll be able to 'track your vote-by-mail ballot', which is promising.  I will admit that my disposition is to not really like or admire the government, but if they can make tracking my ballot as easy as I can track my order from DoorDash or Uber Eats, I'll be pretty impressed.  The last day to request a mail-in ballot in DuPage County is ...

Along the north fence line, about mid-way back in our yard, we have a couple of youngish trees that are 2" to 3" caliper trees about 15 to 20 feet tall.  After looking at their leaves, I went around to the rest of the yard to try to identify if I had more than these two.  As you can see above, the leaves are quite jagged along the edges and they are alternate, not compound.  Meaning, the leaves are not exact opposites of each other, but go one on one side, then the other side, then back to the first side, etc. I tried a few leaf identifying apps and even Google Lense and they gave what I though was questionable results:  they identified it as an Ash Tree.  The issue?  Ash Trees have compound branching .  Also, my parents lost dozens of Ash trees to the Borer over the past decade, so I was surprised to think that I had two Ash trees that had survived.    I wanted to figure out what I was dealing with, so after the web gave me mixed re...