Why I Oughta...

Fall planting is here.  At least...for me it is.  I have two real gardening/planting seasons:  Spring - when I can't help myself and get busy in the garden/at the garden center/at the Morton Sale.  And then Fall - when I divide and transplant and buy things that go on end-of-season sales.  This is the first planting of that 'fall planting' period and is something that I've been thinking about for years.  And, finally did something about it. I'm talking about the northside of our garage, where we get full shade and have a narrow, foundation bed that borders the bluestone chip path that leads to our backyard.  All the way back in 2018, I started posting about what to do with this area  in terms of trees and shrubs.  There are really two parts that *could* be addressed.  First..against the house to sort-of soften-up the large, white, blank wall.  And, then (potentially) against the property line to provide a sense of 'privacy' or screening from the driveway nex

100-or-so days after planting a 5-gallon Climbing Hydrangea ( Hydrangea anomala petiolaris ) back by the firepit, we're seeing some real upwards leader growth.  Or...what I plantsmen call "aerial rootlets".   We have this climbing, flowering vine going up a Hackberry tree and the R O U G H bark sure seems to be helpful in giving those aerial roots something to grab on-to. See below for the current mid-Summer form of our Climbing Hydrangea:  There are a few, sparse blooms on it this year, too.  So, that's kinda nice, right?   I'm hoping that this will wrap around (and not injure) the tree, so that it can be viewed from all angles. This also has me wondering:  where else could I plant one?  I've long talked about espalier'd trees along the garage, but maybe this is a better answer there, too?  Or...what about both? Last year, I saw one of these at 50% off the end-of-year sale at the Growing Place .  I'll have to pop back over there again this year. 

As part of our initial startup landscaping installation, w e put in five Vanilla Strawberry Hydrangeas across the front of our house .  Four in front of the porch - behind the inital boxwood row - and one over on the side of the garage - the corner where the garage meets the driveway and sideyard.  I've posted about them over the years , but I don't think they've ever managed to reach their peak color-wise like they have this year.  Or...rather...like the ONE by the garage has this year.  The other four have all struggled.  Because of the Norway Maple tree.  Of the four, one of them has died.    The Hydrangea by the garage? It is putting on quite a show: But, the blooms are falling over.  One of my 2023 to-do items needs to be learning how to prune hydrangeas so they stand upright and stop flopping over .   I also need to replace the one that died up front.  With the tree being removed, the time is right bring these to their full potential.

Back in 2019, I transplanted a dark read Coral Bell perennial that I had in our urn container into the bed on the side of the garage and didn't think much about it.  It survived that first Winter and grew to a nice size.  Last Spring, I decided to divide it up into three plants.  This is an area of deep shade, so after dividing them, I didn't water them too much.  But, by Fall all three of them had survived .  Fast forward to this Spring and all three are showing new, dark red (maroon) foliage in the long, linear bed along the garage.  You can see them below: This photo - while posted in early June - was actually take in early May before I mulched the beds.  One of my 2022 to-do items (#16) was to design with dark foliage .  These certainly count as dark foliage.  Another item (#12) continue to divide plants.  These are too small (right now) to think about dividing them, but I'm thinking they'll go on a two or three-year schedule.   2019: Planted in container. Transpl

Yesterday, I showed a photo of a series of Ostrich Ferns that have worked a little and naturalized along the long, linear mulch bed that runs between our garage and the Bluestone chip gravel path that leads to our backyard.  After planting one (or maybe two) transplants, we now have eight Ostrich ferns of different sizes that have begun to fill the area in.  In that post, I mentioned that I also planted some bare root Ostrich Ferns a little further back along the garage (behind the fence gate) .  Here's what those ferns now look like clustered close to the little stoop outside our sidedoor.  Below you can see the ferns that have unfurled in this little, narrow bed: In this post in 2018, I said that I planted three bare root Ostrich Ferns here , but thanks to them spreading a little bit, we now have nine ferns of varying maturity.  See below for an annotated version of the same photo/area showing the nine now in orange circles: There's also some Creeping Jenny Moneywort on the

Over on the side of the garage - in the long, linear bed that is sandwiched between the house and the gravel path, there are a few different plants that I've tucked in here and mostly left alone.   I talked about this area earlier this Spring when I talked about (potentially) planting some trees that I can espalier against the house to kind-of 'break up' the large mass of wall .  When I posted that photo in mid-April, none of the perennials had emerged just yet, but with Spring turning to Summer around here, this spot has started to come alive.  And, what's showing up strong?  Ostrich Ferns.  See below for a photo showing some of the Ostrich Ferns that have spread and naturalized in this area: Here, below, is an annotated photo showing the location of eight Ostrich Ferns - some tiny and some more mature.  Based in the location, the larger stand of fern fronds that are just above the large rock were the ones that I originally planted and the rest have spread via rhizomes

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

 Our garage door is oversized.  And, when I say oversized, I mean oversized...by a lot.  It is a normal width, but the height makes it bigger than most.  And heavier than most. Our spring snapped after just three years.  Seems like it didn't have a normal life.  So, instead of swapping out like-for-like, we replaced it with this monster: Still needs tweaking because it SCREAMS on the way up and on the way down.    The Garage Door Guy has an idea - and it involves PVC pipe to separate the spring from the metal rod.

Bench via WoodsmithPlans.com In March of this year, I posted a photo of a wall-hung workbench that I came across on Instagram .  The photo above is of that same bench, but comes from the source of the plans:  Woodsmith Plans .  They're offering a plan for sale for the bench plus the tool holder above and the little shelf for hand tools on the very top for $10 .  I think I've settled on going with this direction for both a bench in my shop in the basement, but also for a garden bench that I'm now planning in the garage. This whole thing started with this initial wall-hung workbench with curves that I found online at the WoodArchivis t.  But, in looking at the space constraints that I have in my shop, coupled with some concerns about the rigidity of the curved superstructure, I've kind of drifted away from my initial plan.  In the shop, my plan calls for hanging the bench on concrete walls, which requires cleats or ledgers (as in this design above).  For the othe

Yesterday, I posted a photo of the first Disney Pin Board that I hung in the garage .  Today, you can see the larger pin board that I hung above it in vertical orientation.  This one is about 2.5x the size of the original board and can hold A LOT of pins.  Two weeks ago, I picked up a couple of these large-scale cork boards at a garage sale for $0.50 a piece.  And they threw in another smaller one that I might or might not use (depends on how far we get with our current volume of pins).  I decided to put this one *above* the first pin board mostly because it is out of reach of the kids.  I contemplated putting it right next to the first, full board, but because of where our stairs are located, that would have put this second board right within reach of the kids.  The downside is that I hung this with screws.  I learned from hanging the first one that once full of pins, these boards get really heavy.  And that means that there's no way of hanging these things that will work -

After years of collecting, trading and buying Disney pins, it felt like finally time to begin to take them out of their various Ziplock bags and boxes and put them out in a place that we can enjoy them.  What you see above is the first Disney Pin Board that holds a variety of pins that the kids and I have collected over the years.  This board came from a garage sale and if you look closely, you can get a sense for where our collection is *going*.  Hint...look up.  More on that in a different post. If you care to investigate, you can click here to see the Google Photos version of this photo .  There, you can zoom all the way in and figure out what is what.  Try to find the "Pooh Bear Collection"!?!

Inside of our garage, we had a hose bib installed during construction that I intended to use to water inside the garage, on the driveway and out front of the house.  But, when we actually started to use the hose in this area, it quickly became apparent that we had to be thoughtful in terms of where/how we stored the hose.  At first, I considered something like the (highly regarded) Eley hose reel with a traditional hose.  I came across it from Laura on Garden Answer in this video .  But, in thinking about how much the kids are involved in the hose (watering the flowers, playing with the water, etc), it seemed like if I wanted the hose to end up wound up each and everytime, I was going to have to find a self-retracting hose reel.  GeekbeatTV ran a review of a retractable hose reel from Flowmaster that seemed right for us.    Our Home Depot sells the same Flowmaster reel but under the Gartenkraft name .  And after it came home with us, it sat in the garage for a month.  Then I figu

Well...we don't actually have it on hand, but I've cut a deal and my Dad is picking it up this week while he's in Coloma. That's right, we're the proud owner of that beauty of an apple press.  I found it at a yard sale up in Coloma and after passing on it initially, we went back later in the afternoon only to find it closed.  The woman told me that they bought it from a farmer back in the 1970's but she had no idea how old it was.  It has two parts: a grinder in the box (that's the wheel on the side) and the 22 lb press on top (that's the handle on top). Fortunately, the house was for sale, so I took a shot and emailed the agent with my story about wanting to reach the owner of the house she was selling to try to buy their apple press.  Well...a few days later a lady calls me and....yada, yada, yada....we now have an apple press.  (Or...we will have it this week when my Dad comes home from Michigan!). And...yes...I yada-yada'd over the good p

Five years ago today, I posted this photo of the electricians finally wiring up our garage in Elmhurst .  Below is a screenshot from the blog. Really hard to believe that it has been five years since this went in.  Pretty remarkable.  In the photo, we had the old chainlink fence and the arborvitae that we planted are tiny.  And the entire patio area/pavilion off the garage isn't there.  Most importantly...we were just a family of three.  And had a five month old.  Time sure does fly.

I spent a good part of Saturday, straightening out our garage.  Back a few years ago, we built a 3 car garage that has - for the better part of the last year - housed 1 car.  And a lot of bikes and toys and wagons, and trikes.  My car has been sitting in the driveway all summer long,  but last week when I was getting up early to go to Cardio Tennis, my windshield had a thin layer of frost across the whole thing.  Winter was, indeed, near. So I dec-luttered and put a lot of our stuff up in the rafters to make room and after a few hours, I was able to drive my car into the space.  And there's plenty of room for Nat's big grocery wagon.  A win for everybody - but mostly me!  Just in time for the cold front that is set to arrive this week.

We did it.  We pulled the trigger on the playground purchase.  After a few weeks of research, we came to the conclusion that we couldn't beat the deal on the Cedar Summit Panorama Playset from Costco .  We went down to the Rainbow showroom and while some of their sets are spectacular, the prices were a bit rich for us.  Menards has build-you-own kits, but I'm not sure we could design and build something as nice as this Costco set.  As you can see, it comes in six boxes - some of them HUGE.  It took some work, but with half of it on top of our car and the other half inside, I got it home.  It now resides in our garage awaiting a warm weekend.  I have some groundwork to do in leveling and clearing the site as well as thinking about timbers to retain/hold in the mulch.  Hopefully by Memorial Day, we'll have the Panorama up and useable.

After our garage was built, I applied a floor coating from Rust-oleum as a DIY project.  For a few hundred bucks, we had a nice, sealed floor.  I never got around to posting these photos - they've been sitting as a draft for MONTHS - but with winter here and our garage floor covered in melted snow, salt residue and grim, it reminded me that (I hope) I'll be able to throw down a little pinesol mop away and then squeejee the moisture out the door and we'll have a perfect floor. The process of actually applying this stuff is easy, but the prep is a pain.  You have to etch your concrete - even brand new bare concrete - with an acid and get it spotless and dust free.  In order to get the chips down, I did one "square" at a time with each container covering 3 "squares".  Since we have a 3 car garage, that meant two kits to get it done.  You also have to cut-in the edges with a brush, but after that, it is just rolling out paint.  Easy-peasy! These are th

As part of the garage project, we put in a fireplace (I've talked about it at length before.)  All summer long, I tried to enjoy it, but everytime I put a fire on, it was just too stinkin' hot to really think that it was a great idea.  We had a few smaller fires - and enjoyed the looks but couldn't sit too close because the atmospheric temperatures were in the 90's, so the fires just made things worse. But...with last weeks temperatures in the 70's and 60's at night, the fireplace is getting put through it's proper paces.  I think we had fires 5 out of 7 nights last week.  My nephew and niece enjoyed the s'mores part of the night quite a bit.

I've all but written off the grass.  I was thinking it would come back in time for this party we're having Saturday, but that's clearly NOT going to happen. But....the rest of the stuff?  I assumed it was a slam dunk - everything would be done by today at the latest. Guess what?  MOST everything isn't done yet.  The contractor hasn't been around for 6 days.  In fact, he called me back last night after I left him messages for the past five days.  He's apparently taken another job.  I begged him to come today after he's done and get the electric done.  He thinks he can get it done this afternoon and tomorrow afternoon.  If he doesn't, I'm sure I'll write a post about him specifically.... I've also had to quickly find another contractor to install the stone on the fireplace.  It showed up over the weekend.  This was on the original contractor's contract, but with so little time, I needed to turn elsewhere. That's the box of corners

With the rain holding off so far this morning, the paver guys are hard at work trying to get the job done.  I don't think they'll get it done, but at least a portion of it is underway. I was nervous about the pattern, but after a bunch of them went in, it became more understandable.  Will they be ready for our party?  We'll see.