Why I Oughta...

This photo below is of a small corner of a lawn that sits between hardscape and is notoriously hard-to-grow-in.  It is also in the crotch of a driveway - which means that it gets driven-on from time-to-time.  That causes compaction and both a drop in the level of the soil AND a deterioration of the grass.   Last Summer, I filled the area with municipal biosolids.  Have a look at what the area looks like in early Spring - and compare it visually to the rest of the turf. The green-up difference is striking, no?   Biosolids.  Plus...(I presume) the warm-up that comes from the driveway retaining heat = a happy turf.

There we were, minding our own business on a little trip out in Oak Brook, when we came across one of John Lennon's prized Rolls Royce phantoms sitting out front.   Two quick things:  First, pretty sure this isn't a Phantom V ( as only 517 of them were made ) and second, it isn't John's, of course.  If you head here and scroll down , you can see that John's car had a third side window - and was stretched out longer than this beauty below.   Would make a heckuva wedding-day car, wouldn't it?  That's what I'm guessing it was doing out.

On a trip to Binny's to pick up some fancy beers for herself, Nat noticed a sign that said that the Budweiser Clydesdales were going to be appearing at Binny's in Oak Brook.  Well, we couldn't miss that, right?  I have never peep'd them in person before and it was pretty neat! They were scheduled to be there for a few hours, but the weather cut it short.  Fortunately, we were there for a while before they put them away. Talk about nostalgia and holidays and the feels all wrapped up in one nice, neat package. Amazing ambassadors for the brand.  Too bad it is a giant European conglomerate these days. But they're still bringing out the horses for Suburban rubes like us.  And guess what?  It worked.

What the what?  Come for the chicken, stay for the unlimited Dole Whips.  That's the motto of the chicken place that is part of the chain that seems to have sprung up overnight with locations all over the place.  I've been to two locations in the loop and neither had this Dole Whip machine, but Nat sniffed it out in the newish food court/food hall that Oak Brook built upstairs in the mall by the new theatre.  I've written about Dole Whips before.  There's the time that I compared the sight of a set of Dole Whips at the Polynesian to the time when Rudy's Dad first laid eyes on Notre Dame Stadium .   Then there was the time when a guy who runs a Yogurt store in Glen Ellyn reached out to tell us that they were carrying Dole Whips .  They have one of those fancy customizable Coke machines with dozens of drinks and flavors but after poking around on the machine, I think I figured out that they don't have any pineapple juice or pineapple flavore...

I've posted quite a few times about the various brass 'critters' that I've bought at garage sales, antique malls, estate sales, etc over the years.  The most recent was t his little Fox letter holder from an Estate Sale in Downers Grove .  This weekend I stopped at a few Estate Sales including one in a giant house in Oak Brook.  Amongst that massive amounts of stuff (and the biggest crowd I've ever seen at an Estate Sale), was this giant brass deer.  Laying down, it was at least 3 feet tall including the antlers. I snapped a photo and sent it to Nat.  But, the timing is the thing for us.  We're this/close to having a new place to live where we'll be reunited with our stuff from storage.  We don't quite know where things can go/live and that's a big part of buying something like this, right?  Picturing where it could go in your house? Alas, this one is being filed away in the [ one that got away ] category.  Hopefully another buyer fell in...