Why I Oughta...

Just yesterday, I posted some photos of the first tulips that I was able to spot in our front yard beds (in between two driveways down by the sidewalk) and mentioned that I wasn't sure if there were going to be more up by the house.  We took down the large Norway Maple tree and replaced it with a Triumph Elm last Fall .  As part of that process, the crew ground out the stump and with it (I presume) a bunch of the bulbs that I planted around the base on the tree.   But, life finds a way.  See the photo below that shows the trunk of the Triumph Elm up on a bit of a berm.  But...at the very bottom of the photo - in the middle - you'll see some tulip bulb tips: And, so too, have the tulips down around our parkway tree emerged.  See below for a few photos:

2022 is shaping up to be a pretty light year in terms of planting trees on our property.  And that's, ok in my book.  Why?  Because there are fewer and fewer spots that trees make sense left AND that means I'm becoming a little bit more picky in what I want to do.  The last tree that we planted this year was in late May when we dug in a VERY SMALL Saratoga Ginko tree that one of the kids bought at the Morton Arboretum Arbor Day sale .  When I say "very small", I mean very.small.   We tucked this tree (more like a seedling) into an existing small, curved bed in our front yard.  It is planted almost *amongst* a little cluster of Little Henry Sweetspire by our front walk.  I put it there on purpose - because the tree WAS so small, I thought it needed both a little bit of protection both from damage as well as the conditions.  This way, it can put on some new growth, get established and do that all in the shadow of the shrub.  I also di...

When we had our house built back in 2016/2017, one of the steps was the digging and installation of new sewer and water lines.  That required some serious digging from the center of the street all the way up to our house.  That digging was located fairly close to our large parkway tree - in fact it was so close that when we came to see the hole, we could see that the sewer guys had cut some of the roots.   Ever since then, I've been holding my breath with concern that the tree had suffered some damage.   I'm posting this in the [ garden dairy ] so I remember both what the canopy looks like in Spring but also what the color of the leaves look like, too.   Here, below, is the tree.  It is orange-ish/brown-ish.  Certainly NOT green like the rest of the maple trees around our neighborhood.   And, I'm content this year because I noticed the same thing last year.  This tree isn't suffering/stressed (at least I'm...

It is sure feeling like Spring around these parts.  But, this columnar Oak tree that I came across on a walk sure isn't in the mood to bud out.  It is still clinging to it's Fall leaves.  This is a parkway tree, so it was planted by the forestry or arborist division of the Village of Downers Grove public works department as part of their parkway tree program.  I mentioned/covered the species that they have available in this post about our own parkway tree at the very end of 2019 and sure enough...one of the Spring-planted trees are Oaks.  They list them as (various species) in their handout . Might be a Columnar English Oak?  This Monrovia listing shows it down to Zone 5 .  This is a lovely parkway tree and the marcescence adds some drama to the curbside that's for sure.  I've covered the concept of marcescence (trees like this one retaining leaves through all of/part of Winter) on the blog.  And we see it with our own Oak trees and...

As part of my 2020 prep for the yard , my mind has started to wandering to tree planting and specifically thinking about tree planting in the front yard and parkway.   Above is a schematic that shows off some of the existing trees and my current (aspirational) thinking of what sort of moves I could make in 2020.  But, before I jump into the specifics of that drawing up above, let's look at the current situation. Let's start with our parkway tree situation.  Below is a shot from Google Streetview that shows off our one large Norway Maple parkway tree, the location of the 'old driveway' and this other tree that is just behind the sidewalk that I'm pretty sure is a Mulberry tree.  This Streetview image is a few years old and is of the house that was on site BEFORE we built, but the driveway location is pretty close to where the current driveway is located.  You can see the stretch of parkway between the driveway and the large Maple tree.  Keep that th...