Why I Oughta...

Yesterday, I posted some photos and details of the very early 'chop-and-drop' that I did with a couple of the Autumn Moor Grasses in the new front porch bed extension.  I found a little bit of time in the early evenings this week to try a little bit of clean-up.  I wanted to get it started now because I wanted the time for that newly, mulched material to begin to decompose.   While I didn't finish the ornamental grasses in front (yet), I also moved on to a different spot:  the raised vegetable bed on our back patio.  Just like the grasses, this bed had some stems and seed heads that I left behind from last season's plants.  Tomato bushes.  Herb stems.   I took my pruners to those and cut them up into small segments.  And left them on the top of the bed.  You can see the 'chopped' mulch in the two photos below.  I typically top this bed with a couple of bags of compost and/or mushroom compost, so this plant litter will get...

We might have a problem in the garden.  Or, we might have something else totally.  I'm talking about the volunteer Silver Maple tree that popped up last season and one that I have left alone all this year.  Has it grown?  Yeah.  It.has.grown.  A LOT. I last posted about this tree in mid-July (about 50 days ago) and it has not slowed down since then.  I mentioned in that post that I was guessing it had put on 3' of new growth this year.  Now?  I'd say it is more like five feet of new growth.  It is every bit as tall as the Exclamation London Planetrees that sit by the fence .  Below, is a look at the current state of this (questionable-in-value) tree that is in our south beds: I didn't plan for this tree.  And...I've read all about the merits of Silver Maples.   Naturalist Donald Peattie wrote an length about the Silver Maple and called it a paradox . Both the pros - fast-growing, beautiful crowns and ability to gro...

Last year, I let this Maple tree volunteer seedling just go .  It grew up and up and I ended up protecting it via a chicken wire ring during the Winter.    It came back this year and has put on a ton of new growth on the leader.  SO....I figured it was time to try to figure out what variety of Maple/Acer I was dealing with in the garden.  I went out and looked the foliage and then started to look around - and it was a quick Web stroll to figure out that I'm dealing with a Silver Maple.    Below are two photos of the top and bottom of the leaf - and there are two tells here.    At least...I'm about 75% confident that this is, indeed, a Silver Maple. The Chicago Botanic Garden has this listing up for Silver maple (Acer saccharinum) that details those two tells that are visible in the photos above: The silver maple is a North American native and best known for providing us with maple syrup. The leaves have the classic maple leaf shape and becom...