Why I Oughta...

With the calendar turning over to the new year soon, my mind has naturally drifted outdoors to our backyard to think about what kind of 'tree planning' we should be doing in Spring.  Right after Christmas, I posted my front yard tree succession planting plan .  And because we've been filling our bird feeder, my mind has been focused on the area you see in the photo above.  I've covered this section of yard before with this Fall of 2017 post showing the landscape plan here . Of note, what I'm showing here differs from what the plan includes, but that's because the plan doesn't call for many new trees, but instead uses the existing trees and augments them with shrubs. To set the context - or edges - of this image, you can see two trees that I've posted about before. First, in purple, on the left is the Weeping White Spruce Columnar tree . And, in red, on the far right is the Weeping Cedar tree that I planted and lost .  I've left the corpse

With multiple visits to Tokyo now under my belt, I have come to realize that there are plenty of things that I am drawn to during my stays including the hospitality, the crazy products, work (of course) and maybe most significantly:  their horticulture.  Mostly their trees. I've posted a bunch about the trees of Tokyo starting with my first visit where I saw the Cherry trees in full blossom in 2017 .  Earlier this year, I posted some photos from a Spring visit where I saw some workers pruning street trees into a columnar shape and had the good fortune of seeing the deciduous trees without their leaves.  I also posted this photo of a carefully crafted pine tree outside of the Peninsula Hotel close to the office I was visiting.   The pruning they do starts young as I found a few very thin pine trees close to a building that have begun their pruning/training.   And...where I saw the most interesting collection of trees (mostly White and Black Pines) was in the outer gardens of

It's - beginning - to - look - a - lot - like - Christmas....  At least if you walk down Randolph Street outside of the Daley Center.  I took this photo on a recent walk and you can see the guys in the bucket trucks stringing little white twinkle lights on the Ginko trees that are perched in the raised beds right along Randolph.  I covered this same thing the past few years. In 2016, the lights went up in early October . And in 2015, the lights went up in September . So, the trend continues to creep back towards Halloween.    And, I for one, don't consider this Christmas creep.  They don't keep them on once the installation is done.  Let's just count this as flat out good weather planning, right?

Each year, Anchor Brewing puts out a Christmas Ale .  This is the 36th version and each year the recipe changes a bit (although they keep it a secret!).  Thanks to the refined palate of my brother-in-law Charlie, this has become a mainstay at the Moran household during Christmas.  I don't drink all that much these days, but I always make room for a few of these - as a treat.  I *think* I've had the '07, '08, '09, and now the '10.  (ah....the aughts were fine years, weren't they?!?) Can't tell you much about the flavors and/or taste, but it certainly was effervescent.   The bottle, on the other hand, is quite handsome.  In fact, they change the tree on the label each year, but this year's tree has meaning for me!  It has a Ginko on it - and those of you who are loyal readers know that we planted a Ginko tree earlier this summer! Turns out, if you keep them over the years, the flavors age and the ales taste differently the longer you keep them.  Or.