Why I Oughta...

In the photo below you can see a number of 'crowns' or slightly different colored dots that are scattered around this bed.  What are those?  Ostrich Fern crowns.  They're filling up the bed behind the Oak tree - tree swing tree.  And, they've naturalized.  They're spreading and multiplying.  It feels like this is a moment:  keep or dig up and remove.   As I mentioned...they multiply.  So, this year there might be twenty.  Next year...there might be 40.    The issue:  I don't have anything to replace them.  But, despite falling in love with Ostrich Ferns, I've moved on to other ferns.  Autumn Ferns, in particular.  But, those don't naturalize.   This is where I've always envisioned a 'garden path'.  Perhaps I leave these now (don't do a "Fern Upgrade") and utilize non-woven cloth to smother out any Ostrich ferns in the way. 

The scourge of our neighborhood is in peak form right now.  Wild onions - with their waxy, thin green foliage can be spotted in lawns and beds all over our neighborhood.  And they seem to be getting WORSE.  Starting back in 2019, I've conducted an annual removal process of these things.  Some years - much more than others .  But, I've dug up and tossed Wild Onion bulbs every April. I was out cleaning up some of the edges this week and decided to dig some of the bulbs out.  I hate them. Turns out, wild onions are biannuals - they come back every two years .  That means that you REALLY have to be diligent for two consecutive seasons if you want to control them.  As for the lawn vs the beds - I'm coming around on the lawn, but think I'd like to attack them in the beds (especially around the tree swing tree).  

Earlier this month, I posted about I was taking down a few Buckthorn trees on our property as part of early Fall/late Summer yard maintenance.  After peeping at the leaves on those Buckthorns and following the recommendation of our landscaper who marked them as such, I was pretty confident in removing them, despite their somewhat mature size.  The benefits of removing them far outweigh their continued survival .  There were, however, a bunch of other trees on the property that I couldn't at first identify and wasn't sure if I should keep or remove. So, after some initial searching on the internet, I thought what I had were Mulberry trees.    You'll notice in the photo above something unique:  The leaves on one branch had very different leaves.  On.the.same.branch!  The leaves at the top of the photo have a few lobes on them, while the leaves near the tip - at the bottom of the photo are more egg-shaped.  Strange, right?  All signs ...

The tree that you see in the middle/right of this photo (the one with a singular trunk that splits into two about two feet from the ground) is a Buckthorn.  This particular Buckthorn is located a short distance away from the "far southwest corner" that I showed in our landscape plan earlier this year.   (You'll note that there's another Buckthorn that is shown in that post and marked for removal.) And a quick look at the listing from the Morton Arboretum tells you all you need to know about the tree: I had a few Buckthorns identified by our landscaper and landscape designer and marked for removal, but with the temps cooling off, I figured it was finally time to get back there and take a look at them and see what I could do myself.  I found a couple of small ones and then used the Google machine to quickly identify that I was, indeed, dealing with Buckthorn. A look at the leaves - not to mention the broad, yet pointy thorns on the main part of the tree - m...