Why I Oughta...

The Cherry Blossoms are in bloom.  At least in our backyard.  The photos below show our Kwanzan Flowering Cherry Tree in bloom with pink flowers and red-to-maroon foliage.  Those leaves turn out ordinary - green-colored - as the Spring and Summer wears on.   This tree was bought in Mid-May in 2017 as we were still building our new house.  We planted this ahead of our occupancy and had to baby it as the heat of Summer arrived .   For the full tale of the tape, here's the history of this tree below.  It has bloomed five of six years with 2019 being the only year we saw no flowers.   2017: Bloomed (when purchased) in mid-May . 2018: Bloomed that first Spring after being planted in mid-May . 2019: No blooms. Looked like it wanted to in mid-May . 2020: Bloomed (during the pandemic) in early May . 2021: Bloomed in late April (photos in this post were taken on April 28, 2021) 2022:  Bloomed in mid-May. (photos taken on May 11). 2021 was the earliest (late April), but the other four

I've talked about how our yard, beds and even view of our house from the street has changed since we moved in back in 2017.  At that time, we had a house next door (to the north) that was sitting closer (than our house setback-wise) to the street and had a driveway that wasn't right on the property line.  With our new neighbors building and moving in a couple of years back, that changed.  They upgraded the property and house in a MASSIVE way.  And...they're just good neighbors and nice people.  But, they did upgrade the property in so many ways.  In doing so, they built their new house a bit further back from where the old, smaller house was situated.   As a result, that 'view from the street' that I mentioned changed a little bit.  It changed when you are coming south on our street/sidewalk and 'see' our house.  What used to be hidden (mostly) due to landscaping and the old house was the side of our garage.  It is a big, mass of wall with no windows.   Here

Day three of the front-yard tree buds in Winter - first with the Saucer Magnolia fuzzy flower buds and then yesterday with the Red Fox Katsura .   Today, is the Chanticleer Pear flowering tree that is in the 'in between two driveways' island and planted pretty close to the Katsura.  This was a replacement tree that was planted in 2018 after our first one died.  This one STRUGGLED.  By October of 2018 (four months after planting), it was in bad shape .  Turns out, it was planted in a 'clay bowl' and the roots were drowning in what is called the ' bathtub effect ' where water had no where to go.   It seemed to continue to decline in 2019 - but by Spring 2020, I was seeing the very FIRST flower buds .  Not everywhere.  But, some flowers.   Then, last Spring - 2021 - we seemed to have a big part of the tree that had died back.  And a bunch of the tree that looked to be back on track - and flowering .    I ended up cutting off all the dead stuff and created a prett

Late February and Early March is usually the time when I start to get a little garden-stir-crazy and begin to get back out to examine the winter damage and build up my hopes for the coming growing season.  It is when the tree and shrub buds begin to swell and we can start to see what is going to pop.  It is also a sloppy, wet and muddy time of year.  Or, a frozen-solid, snow-covered time of year.  This past week, it was a mix of both.  We had some warming temperatures with snow melting and some rains which made the ground soggy and saturated.  They say you're supposed to stay out of your garden beds during the wet season of Spring to keep the ground from compacting too much, so I've mostly tooled around the lawn this week.   It is a good time to document in the [tree diary] and [garden diary] the state of some of the buds that are beef'ing up and getting ready to put on a show.  I'll start where I have typically started before:  with our Saucer Magnolia.  Below, you can

When I posted last week about the replacement (tiny) Ginko tree that I planted 'ib2dw', I mentioned that the Ginko wasn't the last tree for the year.  There are a few more coming this week - starting with my very first Dogwood tree.  When I bought the small Chinkapin Oak tree from the Conservation Foundation in late September , I also bought another small native tree:  A Cornus alternifolia (Pagoda Dogwood).    Below, you can see the tag for the tree. This dogwood is different than the ones I've seen in the big box nurseries where I typically see Cornus kousa and Cornus florida.  You can read up about those various cultivars around the Web - but the main takeaway is that florida is the standard that has been around for a while, but kousa is a new(er) sport that is more disease resistant.   The dogwood tree that we selected is known as the Pagoda Dogwood.  Morton Arboretum has a tree listing up here for the Pagoda Dogwood - Cornus alternifolia . They describe it an '

This past weekend, our next door neighbors had a party on their back patio.  It was a really nice time (aside from a sting...) with a lot of great people.  At the party, I found myself sitting in one of their Adirondack chairs and facing my own house.  And I couldn't help but be struck by this big, blank wall staring back at me: This is part of the south side of our house that has a little sideyard that we've (mostly) neglected.  I have three Disneyland Roses over there - you can see two of them in the photo above.  But, there's just a linear, foundation-hugging border and some ratty turf.  Based on how the Village of Downers Grove mandates the grading, there's also a little ditch 1   but other than that, nothing much to see here.   I've long thought about converting all of this side yard into a bed; it gets a lot of sun, the grass doesn't do much for me and it would be a little bonus garden.  The downside is that nobody really sees it - including us.  But, th

Posting a couple of photos of two trees in our yard that I took earlier this month.  First, we have two Catalpa trees in our yard.  Starting around June 8th and running through the middle of the month, both of our Catalpa trees were in bloom with lovely white blooms.  I inherited both of these, so filing these under [inherited tree] like I did with the Oaks and River Birch clump .   Here, below, is Catalpa tree that is closer to our house in bloom.  It is a really nice tree that I never looked at very closely.  It is tucked in behind the large Northern Red Oak tree and in front of one of our large Walnuts.   You can see the blooms scattered on the ground under the tree in the photo above. The other tree that I wanted to share was the Dawn Redwood tree below.  It was VERY slow to break bud but by late April, it started to come alive.  With the drought we've had all Spring, it seemed to my naked eye like this tree hasn't filled out as much as it has in previous years.  But, now

Back in 2017, we had a large (3" plus caliper) Chanticleer Pear tree planted in our front yard - adjacent to our garage and driveway.  That tree died in year one and was replaced.  The replacement tree suffered the same way, but it took me close to a year to figure out that the problem was water - but not drought.  It was OVERwatering and the tree was drowning.   I worked the hole and tried to break through the clay bowl, but the tree has never been right. In 2018, it flowered in November .  Weird, right?    I last covered this tree in April of last year when it was showing just a couple of flower buds .  It leaf'd out just a little bit last year and I assumed that it was a goner this Spring. So much so, that I planted another , second tree in the shadow of this one with the thinking that I'd get a half-year head start with the new tree when the time came to chop down this pear.  That tree was this very thin Red Fox Katsura tree that I planted "between two driveways&

Our front yard, multi-stem Saucer Magnolia tree is in full bloom this week and it is putting on quite a show.  We had this tree planted in Summer of 2017 and have seen it bloom in 2018 , 2020 and now (for the 3rd time) 2021.  Despite the hard, cold Winter and the late frost(s) this Spring, the flower buds persisted and began to unfurl during the first week of April.  Below, you can see one of the flower buds as it began to open up: This flowering tree (this year) is timed with our 1.5 Flowering Pear trees and the emergence of our tulip bulbs.  It is (this year), not flowering at the same time as our Cherry Blossom tree in the backyard - which is really behind this Magnolia.

Last Spring, our neighbors to the north began framing their house and once the window placements were set, I came to the realization that our row of Frans Fontaine Hornbeam trees were doing a pretty great job of screening between our houses.  But, there was an edge spot - closer to the front of the house - that was going to be exposed to one of their new windows.  So, on Earth Day 2020, we decided to plant a columnar flowering pear tree (yeah...I know.  they're not great trees.  But, I needed to put in something that was inexpensive, narrow in habit and, ummm, fast growing.  The Chanticleer Pear tree fit the bill . When I planted it , the tip top of the tree was right at the fence level.  But, by the time Fall came around , it had put on more than 18" to the top.  Have a peek at it in October of last year .   The tree was beginning to do its job.   I've had mixed luck with these trees.  I had a large (3"+ caliper) planted in our front yard in 2017.  It died that firs

I was out cutting the grass out front this past week and noticed something colorful up in the Saucer Magnolia tree in our front yard.  I wasn't sure what it was, so I started to poke around and try to figure out what was going on.  The tree has grown quite a bit in height the past few seasons, so I can't get up to eye-level, but by pulling some of the branches out of the way, I saw what you see above:  A pink flower in the tree.  Then I looked closer, and I saw another one:  two pink flowers that are present on this tree in the middle of Summer. The last time that we checked in this tree was in early May when I applied a ring of Cocoa Bean mulch around the base after the flowers had bloomed this Spring.  This tree flowered this Spring after missing last year's set of blooms.  What is this Summer bloom on our Saucer Magnolia?  I'm not sure as it has never happened before, but this forum post talks about how Saucers sometimes get a second, summertime bloom .

A few days ago, I posted about suckers on some trees in our backyard that were struggling and didn't leaf-out on time that included one of our Chanticleer Pear trees.  At that time, I talked about how each of these trees seemed to be healthy when they went dormant last year, but all had different issues this Spring.  One of them (the Dappled Willow) started and then shut down.  The Chanticleer Pear tree was the most strange - as it was still green (under the bark), but had some suckers show up a foot or so from the root flare.  And, just as I posted that, I noticed some weird activity on that tree.  It seems that *some* of the branches started to leaf out.  Sparse-ly. But, you can see in the photo below that there are SOME leaves and even one white flower. If you look at the photo above, you'll also see the sucker about a foot from the rootflare.  This is the second Chanticleer Pear tree that had trouble like this.  Our driveway tree was troubled and confused and fl

A couple of weeks ago, we had a tree arrive on our front porch from an online nursery that had what appeared to be a challenging trip via FedEx and when I opened the box, it looked like this: Snapped in half.  Womp Womp. It was a Lavender Twist Weeping Redbud - which Monrovia describes as : Rosy lavender-pink flowers completely cover bare, slightly contorted, weeping branches in early spring. This truly unique selection can develop a beautiful umbrella of cascading branches covered in heart-shaped leaves if trained when young. A captivating small specimen tree for a focal point in a shrub border or entryway. Deciduous. Back in Elmhurst, our neighbors to the north had a big, beautiful Redbud that put on quite a late Spring show with the purple flowers.  And I remember planting one of own - a small one - in our old backyard, but I don't think I posted about it.   One of the kids wanted to get a RedBud as one of their Earth Day trees, but due to the whole COVD-19 thin