Why I Oughta...

Last year in July, I planted a Crimson King Maple Tree in the back part of our yard.  I chronicled the planting here .  And then gave a late Fall check-in post here before it dropped its leaves for the year.   One of the things that I was struck by was the lack of seeds in the tree last year.  The good news is that right now, the tree is loaded with them!  Here's one of them, all green and ready to burst.  Helicopters as we say, right?  I'm thinking that the tree was prioritizing putting down roots last year and didn't have the energy to spare to produce seeds.  Isn't nature amazing?  This season, I didn't pay much attention to the tree and I think that's just fine.  I mean...most people pay NO attention whatsoever to all of their trees, so these trees figure out how to survive on their own.  Just by the eye test, I don't think this tree has grown much in terms of height, but it seems like it has gotten thicker and mor...

That's our very small Canadian Hemlock up above in happier times:  right after planting.  But, alas, the tree is gone.  Lost it this Summer due to drying out.  Just like our Fraser Fir .  I don't have a photo of the carcass of the Hemlock unfortunately.  I took it back to Menards and didn't take the care to photograph the deceased. This makes five tree's we've lost.  Two of them pure conifers, one deciduous conifer. 1.  Chanticleer Pear 3" caliper tree .  Which we might lose again . 2.  The Corkscrew Willow I planted for Nat all the way in the back .  Might be a good thing knowing they're ratty trees. 3.  The Fraser Fir .  And our dreams of grow-our-own Christmas Trees. 4.  The Dawn Redwood that we replaced . 5.  This small Canadian Hemlock. 26 up, five down.  Two of them replaced.  Net of 23 trees alive and well in our reforestation.  In two seasons.  Only one of which is a conif...

In June of this Summer, I posted a series of photos that attempted to document the full tree height in our inventory on Hornbeam Hill .  I didn't get every tree, but I was able to put a height (approximate) on most of the new trees and that post was meant to serve as a reference post for documenting some of the trees as they grow.  But, there are at least two trees that went in *after* that post was shared that I wanted to document.  First up is the replacement Dawn Redwood .  That's the photo on top.  You can see the height of the tree (currently) is just shy of 63" tall. Below is the newly planted Bald Cypress in the front yard by the driveway.  That one is currently 51" tall.  I'll be going back to these trees (if they make it over the Winter) next year and hope to see some 'creep' going on as they shoot upwards. 

I mentioned in a post that I picked up a late-season Bald Cypress tiny tree at Home Depot recently, but didn't want to mark it down (officially.  Or as official as a blog post here counts as...) as the 26th tree that we've planted since we moved in.  But, now, you can see in the photo above that it is, indeed in the ground.  So we're now at 26 trees.  Full list is at the bottom of this post.   As I mentioned in the post when I showed off the newly purchased Bald Cypress, this is a tree that we've been stalking for some time.  I *almost* pulled the trigger on a large one at the Growing Place that had a columnar habit, but passed on it at the last minute.  I have a feeling I'll be back next year to buy *that* tree.  But for now, we'll have to try this little guy. The reason for the little one is both because it was cheap (sure!), but also because of where I planted this thing.  I wanted it to go in the front yard, between our...

It is not all gardening wins for me this Summer.  Sometimes the losses are just as important. I celebrated the planting of this small Fraser Fir in our backyard just 10 weeks ago at the beginning of June.  It was in a good spot in the yard that had plenty of water and it was taking off.  There was a run of new, soft growth that came on the tree in July, then all of a sudden, it started to go brown.  From the top down.  Now, two weeks after I noticed the first bit of brown, the whole thing is gone.  Sad stuff. Not sure if it was water.  Or location.  Or something else like a disease.  It went really fast.  And the shot of new growth followed directly by the brown-out makes me wonder if it was disease-related? This was the 22nd tree that we had planted in our backyard as part of the reforestation process and the second evergreen.  We've added a Hemlock since, though.  I bought this one at Home Depot who has a 1 year wa...

Right at the end of May, I posted about the 3" caliper Chanticleer Flowering Pear tree that we had installed right outside of our garage didn't make it through the Winter and was slated to be replaced.  Welp...as you can see in the photo above, the new tree arrived and was planted recently.  The initial tree was planted in June of 2018 before we moved in and I did a check-in post on the tree in February of this year when I speculated that the tree didn't make it based on the very few buds being set on the tree in the fall.   Here's a side-by-side comparison of the new tree and the one that they ripped out. I've made no secret about my love/hate relationship with these flowering pears.  They do a really great job of growing fast, providing screening and even a little show in the Spring.  But, I know that they're a cheap/low-cost solution that isn't all that long-lived.  That hasn't stopped me from planting three of these including ...

The reforestation continues.  When we bought the lot in Downers Grove, we knew we were going to have to take down some trees due to construction.  The Village of Downers Grove forced us to invest in quite a bit of infrastructure in the name of water management and one of the outcomes of that (digging and placing a big basin, connecting it down to the sewers, etc) was that we took down eight to ten pretty mature trees. Because of that fact and the idea that we want a private, good looking property, we've undertaken quite a bit of planting of trees in what I'm calling a 'reforestation'.  In the first year (2017), we planted exclusively deciduous trees.  Nine total.  We ended up losing three of them, so that's a net of six.  This year (2018), we've planted twelve in total.  That's 21 total, but only one of them (the weeping cedar) is a conifer or evergreen. Number 22 changes that.  Above, you'll see our first traditional evergreen - a Fraser F...

Welp, it is official:  Our Chanticleer Flowering Pear tree out front by our garage is gone.  I n February of this year, I posted a photo and an update on this tree and speculated that I thought it was dead, but we wanted to wait until Spring arrived to see if it came back.  The bad news is marked with that pink spray paint on the trunk:  marked for removal.  I've had (now) maybe seven or eight of these trees over the years and this is one of three we have here in Downers Grove and this is the only one that gave us any trouble what-so-ever.  This one is a 3" caliper, so it is a more mature tree while the rest of them have been 1" or less caliper versions, so they might have had a better shot at catching on.  It is being replaced like-for-like with another of the same variety.  I'll post photos of the new tree once it goes in the ground. 

Yesterday, I shared a photo of our eight Frans Fontaine European Hornbeam 2.5" caliper trees that had been delivered .  These trees were a long-time coming and we've been planning, talking and thinking about them for almost a year.  Today, the trees went in!  Here's the guys digging the holes and placing the trees in the holes to check for placement and spacing.  We ended up going with six feet of spread between each one and 30" away from the fence. You can tell from the photo above that they are going into a low spot and that our neighbor's to the north truck and garage are pretty visible (right now) from the top of our property. Here's three of the eight placed in their holes.  Once we were all happy with the placement, the burlap and rope were removed (well...the bottom of the burlap was left on because our landscaper prefers to keep the rootball intact, but the top of the burlap was cut off and all the rope was removed) and these trees were stuck ba...