Why I Oughta...

This week, when I came home from work one evening, I noticed a particular active squirrel trying to gnaw-off a bunch of small branches near the bottom of the big crotche(s) on our large Northern Red Oak tree in the back that has our tree swing on it.  I observed him/her for a minute, then quickly saw them scurry back to what appeared to be an emerging/being-established nest.  It was located a couple feet-up from the crotch.  I thought about what to do.  And, decided it was best to remove the nest.  My thinking was that it IS NOT baby season.  This nest is NOT occupied - yet.  It is just being built.  My preference is for him to build it much higher in this tree or...in a different tree further back from the patio/tree swing.  So...I hauled out my ladder (a platform ladder) and used an extension pole that is supposed to be used to hang Christmas lights in high places and knocked the little nest down.  My emotions are still mixed and I'm sure that if this gets views in some folks eye

Right around this time every (early) March, the green tips of a set of daffodil bulbs emerge from the mulch in the bed behind the secondary Northern Red Oak tree.  These were inherited - and I didn't plant them.  I've observed them over the years - as far back as our first Spring here (2018) -  and here's last year's post .  They have flowered exactly ONCE.  Just once - in 2021 .   Will they bloom this year?  I doubt it.

Just a few days ago, I posted some photos showing a large amount (at least...it FEELS like a large amount) of Northern Red Oak acorns that are coming down in late July/early August this season.   In that post, I mentioned that it was time to document in the [garden diary] an inventory of what the canopy of the tree-swing tree (Northern Red Oak) looks like in early August. This tree was (I think) troubled and as a result, we started it on a course of treatment.  That included the application of a three-year growth regulator.  And, annual applications of a deep-root fertilizer and of some Two-Lined Chestnut borer treatment .   We've now done three-years of treatments on the tree. The growth regulator appeared to help and the tree seemed to have a different outlook after just one year .   I've been trying to document the canopy of the tree over the years - the last time was in Fall of 2022 when it was turning orange and brown .   The tree has (it appears to the eye) put on new,

It has been a while since we have had any meaningful acorns to drop from our pair of mature, large Oak trees in our yard.  2019 was a Mast Year - with an enormous volume of acorns dropping.  We could hardly keep up.  But, 2020, 2021 and 2022 were all acorn-free.  I feared that the Mast Year was a result of stress and the tree was in decline.  And the subsequent years sort-of felt the same way. But this year?  The acorns are back.  And dropping in big numbers.   The Red Oak acorns are coming down in such heavy volume that it appears that the squirrels aren't keeping up.  I'm harvesting dozens of nuts out of the lawn every.single.day.  Maybe the squirrels aren't in 'get ready for Winter' mode yet?  So, they're not paying attention?  I've been picking up as many nuts as I can and piling them up on top of the fence on the side of our yard in hopes that the squirrels will find them. These Oak trees have been on a three-year program that included Growth Regulator

It was just last week when I posted a couple of photos showing the full, orange and brown Oak tree canopy in our backyard .  Our two largest trees were holding ALL of their leaves until early November of this year.   Then, we had a HUGE storm.  I'm talking heavy winds.  If you watched the Illini vs. Michigan State football game and saw the punts (into the wind), you know what storm I'm talking about.  What happened to our trees and their marcescence?  Most all of the leaves were stripped from the trees.  What does the backyard look like right now - in mid-November?  See below for a photo showing the very few leaves still on the tree-swing Oak tree and nothing else anywhere. 

This post is going up on November 15th, but the photos are from earlier this month - on November 3rd.  Thus...for YoY garden diary record keeping, let's call this 'early November'.   Here's a peek at the large red oaks in our backyard - just about a year ago .  They were holding ALL of their leaves and looking good.  By early December, they had dropped *most*, but were still holding some .  Come Spring, they were still bare in early April .   What do they look like this year - in early November 2022?  See below for the photo showing the brown and orange leaves all over our tree canopy. Here's the same tree two years ago .   We had a VERY big wind storm this past week, so the trees look VERY different today.  I'll post an updated photo - showing mid-November - in the coming days.  

As I've posted about numerous times over the years, we have a couple of mature Oak trees in our backyard that we've worked at keeping alive - and happy - through treatments and fertilizer.  This is the third season that we've had a Two-Lined Chestnut application applied to them in the Fall as a preventive measure against a (potentially) invasive border . Here, below, is the Davey truck when it arrived to treat our Oaks: Here, below, is the paperwork from Davey: Here's a post from the City of Lake Forest up on the North Shore that talks about why they recommend treatment .  Knowing that one of our oaks has been troubled, it was recommended that we treat it to inoculate the tree against an infestation.   I have NO idea if this stuff works, but I think I'll keep applying it in the coming years. 

The time has come to start dividing some perennials.  Why?  Because the temperature has dropped and I find myself with a little bit of time where I can putter in the backyard beds after work before it gets dark.  As a reminder, #12 on my 2022 to-do list was to add more 'free plants' through division - something that I've done the past few growing seasons.   My plan focuses on two different types of plants in our garden:  grasses and hostas.   Earlier this Summer, I went around and identified a few candidates to work on, but I started with a couple of hostas NOT on that list.  I was out by the large, Northern Red Oak tree in the south beds recently and noticed that a couple of hostas that are planted there have grown enough to be considered good candidates for division.  I dug up two - these are unknown cultivars - and split them.   I put one from each division in a hole kind of 'around' the oak tree trunk - in a spot of the border that is currently empty.  See belo

A note here, in the [ tree diary ] that one of our Northern Red Oak trees - the tree swing tree - is exhibiting some signs of leaf marcescence this Winter.  The leaves that are closest to the core of the trunk and along the main branches are remaining through (for now) mid-January.  

Yesterday, I posted some photos of our Frans Fontaine Hornbeam hedge (eight trees) that are still clinging to their leaves as we head into December.  One of the known features of those trees is that they hold their leaves longer than most trees - something called foliar marcescence.  Oak trees do something similar - in that if you look around right now and see large, mature trees with leaves on them, they're very often Oak trees.   Last year, I posted a photo in mid-November showing the pair of mature Oak trees in our backyard that had - by then - dropped all of their leaves .  This was unique as I remember the Oaks holding their leaves deep into Winter.  I wanted to document what these two trees looked like this year - in early December. Here, below, is a look at both of the trees (and other parts of our backyard canopy).  The large Northern Red Oak on the right (the tree swing) has leaves up and down the main trunk and branches.  The other mature Oak (on the top left) has none. 

On Tuesday, I posted a photo of our Northern Red Oak tree turning yellow and putting on a nice bit of a [Fall Show] and today the tree is a striking orange and maroon that warrants a second photo/post in the same week.  The photos in this post (landscape at top, portrait on bottom) barely do this justice.  The reds are dark maroon and are coupled with a Frankfort Tiger-ish yellow/orange combination.  As I said earlier this week, this tree has been different every.single.season - sometimes going brown, sometimes keeping leaves, sometimes dropping.   But the color of the tree right now?  I don't think it has ever done this before.  Maybe it is the most striking tree in our whole neighborhood right now.  

Putting a photo of the large Red Oak tree - the tree swing tree - in the garden diary here to show a little look at the Fall show that the tree is putting on during the first week in November.  You can see in the photo below that the tree is a mix of green and yellow and has held much of the leaves still on the limbs this late in the season - which is typical for this tree and Oaks in general.   I posted a similar photo a year ago - in early November - where the same tree had already lost many of the leaves for the season.   For tracking in the [ tree diary ], I noted that both of our large, mature Red Oak trees had dropped ALL of their leaves by mid/late November last year .  Will be tracking if foliar marcescence will persist this year like it did in 2019.  Here's a photo all the way into December when this tree had leaves clinging to the branches . An additional note about this tree - it didn't produce any acorns this season.  Or, at least, it hasn't dropped any acorn

Late last Summer, we had Davey Arborists apply a three-year growth regulator to some of our large, mature trees that appeared to be in decline due to stress .  That stress was due to construction of our house (I believe) and the disturbance of the roots from cutting and such.  After doing some research on growth regulators, I thought it was worth a shot to apply this stuff to some of the large trees in prime locations of our yard.   And, what's happened?  We've seen some pretty incredible improvement in the trees.  They're growing thicker, more-full and darker green leaves all over the main limbs of the trees.  We had this growth regulator applied to both an Oak and a Maple.  The difference in the Oak tree is clear.  Below, you can see what that tree looks like now in 2021 on the left.  And what it looked like a year ago on the right.  More full, more dense growth all over the existing limbs. On the Norway Maple in the front, the growth regulator's impact isn't as

Last Summer, I posted a photo of a sign that we came across at Waterfall Glen that detailed the difference between the various Oak trees based on their foliage.  About a month later, I put that new knowledge into practice and identified one of the two large Oak trees in our yard as a Northern Red Oak.  (Actually...I'm pretty sure that it is a Northern Red Oak.) In that post, I mentioned that the other large Oak tree (with our tree swing) had leaves way too high up in the air to identify the species and that I should wait until some fall.   Well...thanks to the squirrels in our yard, there are little clumps of leaves that have fallen in the past couple of weeks.  Here's a closeup of one of them showing the pointed leaves with deep lobes. Totally a Northern Red Oak , right?