Why I Oughta...

On the way to and from the bus stop with the girls, we walk past one of our new neighbor's house in the Randall Park neighborhood who have replaced their entire front yard with a perennial garden.  Not an inch of green grass to be found.  Not even in the parkway.  In one of the prime spots adjacent to the sidewalk is this big, sprawling Anemone plant.  If you click on the photo, you'll see that it is still blooming a bit this late in the season and gives me a little bit of joy every time I walk by it. If you've been following along since we were in our old house (before Equation Boy/Man's house ), you might remember that we had an anemone there, too.  It was in the front/side yard, just outside of our front porch and was awfully happy with the location .  The first time I posted about the plant was back six years ago here on the blog .  Our history with anemone goes back to Nat's wedding bouquet - as her friend/florist stuck a few blooms amongst ...

The girls and I planted these Phlox in a couple of pots that my sister had laying around her yard over the weekend.  We, of course, had to go out and add some 'thrill' and 'spill' to them, right?  So, we picked up the old standy-bys of a Spike in back and a Sweet Potato Vine dangling in front.  Not super creative, but we checked all three boxes of your typical planter setup.  They're perennials, but I'm not sure they'll over-winter in the pots?  Maybe if I pull them into the garage? These Creeping Phlox call for full sun, so we put them on the driveway right on either side of the big garage door.  The girls now both have watering cans, so I'm thinking they'll get well watered this summer.

Yesterday, I posted about the Cinnamon Fern that we picked up at the Elmhurst Garden Club Plant Sale that I planted at my sisters house but today I'm sharing the details of another plant that we bought:  the Hosta Venusta. This one, however, isn't going to go in the ground in Elmhurst.  Nope...it's fate is destined for Naperville where we can tuck it in next to our other orphans like the giant hostas that we transplanted last year. Here's a better look at the Venusta Hosta plant.  It is classified as a 'miniature'. Based on the  reviews of the ladies selling these things in Elmhurst, this sounds like one of the very few miniature hostas that you can actually plant in the ground and it *will* come back.  Around the web, you can find people commenting that they're ' very hardy ' and ' spread just like bigger hostas' , so that's good. So, this weekend when we're out and about, we'll make a stop in Naperville and get thi...

The Cinnamon Fern that I mentioned in yesterday's post about our trip to the Crestview Ladies Garden Sale in Elmhurst has found a new home: on the southside of the yard of our current place. I put it right next to a few hostas that my sister has planted and just past their hammock setup. It is a pretty shady spot and based on what I *thought* I knew about Ostrich and Cinnamon Ferns (which....based on this being a Cinnamon Fern, I may know NOTHING!), I know they like to stay pretty wet and out of the sun. When I planted this after work, it was totally shaded and based on the trees overhead, I'm thinking this will be in the shade most of the day.  Look at those hostas behind it:  they don't seem to be drying out/burning out in the sun.  So, I'm thinking we're safe. In the past, these ferns have multiplied pretty rapidly.  I would have one set of shoots come up and by the end of the season, there'd be two or three more.  Planting this one in mid-May, I...

Over the weekend, we stopped by the Crestview Garden Club Annual Plant Sale on St. Charles Road by York High School and despite the weather (it was cold!) we wandered through the selection and picked out a few plants. I wrote about the same plant sale three years ago here on the blog . This time, shopping was a little different because we don't have our own house right now.  So...we were there to buy some plants, but with a mind of either planting them to add something to my sister's yard or something that we can plant in Nat's Mom's garden with the hope of being able to transplant them next year or beyond. I went there seeking out a fern that I could plant here in Elmhurst and came away with two ferns:  one for my sister's yard (the one on the right) and one that we'll plant in Naperville (on the left).  The one on the right is listed as a ' Cinnamon Fern '.  Which...I think I've confused with Ostrich Ferns !  This is a pretty profound mom...

Last week, I posted about the giant hostas that we transplanted over at Nat's parents' house during our move and mentioned that we also moved a few other items at the same time.  One of them is pictured above peeking out of the mulch:  my ostrich ferns. I dug up a few of these clumps of ferns and brought them over late last summer and Nat's mom found a nice shady spot for them to hang out.  I've split up these ferns in the past and had given a few to Nat's mom in the past, so having these come back and survive wasn't our top priority because I knew that we could always split up some of hers. But...when we were over there recently, I spotted the little green parts starting to poke through.   Here's a bunch of the posts about these same ferns over the years here on the blog and you can see how they kind of un-curl as they grow.   These things spread out and multiplied like crazy for me at 274, but how we got them is an interesting story.  Either the o...

I've written about the hostas at our old house a few times here on the blog in the past and being part of our shade gardens, they're one of my favorite things to tend to.  Perhaps it is because I grew up down in Frankfort on a heavily wooded lot that just about only allowed my Mom to have shade gardens?  Or, that they're mostly the domain of perennials that come back each year and there's something magical about those?  I dunno.  But...one way or the other, I like shade gardens. We had a really nice, maturing set of shade plants on the north side of our old lot.  We had ferns, astibiles , and plenty of hostas .  All sorts of hostas.  Some, like these , I picked up at Menards.  Some, were left overs from when the wicked lady moved out of the house and she *thought* that she plucked every last perennial out of the gardens only for us to discover the next year that SOME came back including some hostas.  And a special plant that came from my...

In a sure sign of spring, I have to look no further than some of the landscape beds in our back yard to see the peonies popping their little red tips out of the mulch. This is an annual ritual - the posting of the peony tips - on the blog here.  Six years and counting.   Here's how I documented this Spring moment last year . Here's my post from 2013 . And here are the photos of these same peonies in 2010 , 2011 , and 2012 .

Back a few Saturdays ago, we stopped by the Elmhurst Garden Club's annual plant sale which was held at the Park District's Abby on St. Charles Road . We didn't arrive too terribly early, but there was still a good selection available.  These sales tend to focus mostly on perennials with a few nicely planted annual pots put together. The prices tend to be pretty good and the variety was just fine for us.  They had things broken down into shade vs. sun perennials and a wildflower section.  I always gravitate towards the ferns in the shade  section, but either they only had a few or they were already picked over when we arrived as they only had Ostrich and Painted Ferns available.  Both of which we already have.  The Ostrich variety do really well for us, and we're on our second year with a Painted Fern and it came back well - even after being buried for a few days under mulch. We ended picking up two wildflowers and Pink Plox that the Babe picked out...