Why I Oughta...

The time has come to bring the houseplants in from outside.  We haven't gotten a frost yet, but I know that the first frost isn't too far away.  I don't move too many plants outside, but there are a few including staghorn ferns, my firesticks cactus , Nat's big fern and my standing Mickey Mouse topiary.  This year, I kept the Creeping Fig Vine topiary on the front porch all Summer.  That meant that it received a tiny bit of morning sun, but was in the shade for the bulk of the day.  It was just six weeks ago that I last posted an update on my Mickey Mouse that showed off a good seasonal growth spurt.  If you go back and look at the photo in this post from early August , you'll note that his hands were (at that time) not covered and that there were a few 'shoots' poking out.   Today?  See the photo below for what Mickey looks like after a full season of outdoor growth: This is 18 months of growth and it is pretty well close to being totally full with the fra

Yesterday, I posted a few photos of a hosta that I divided and transplanted around the large red oak tree in our backyard.  I tucked in the two new divisions into a part of the border that was bare.  I mentioned in that post that doing the seasonal gardening chore of dividing perennials was/is on my 2022 to-do list and I had planned to do a few more around the backyard.  Today, I'm showing a divided Bressingham Blue hosta that I dug up from around the side of the screened porch and split into three segments. The hosta in question was planted as a bareroot plant in 2018.  That means it has had five full growing seasons.  Here's what it looked like last Summer (2021), when I declared that this had finally reached maturity .  Today, I dug it up. First, below, you can see the current state of the hosta.  It has many stems and is a good division candidate. I split it into three segments and tucked the largest one back in the same spot.  Below, you can see the remaining Bressingham

Back at the end of February, I started to explore how to mount Staghorn Ferns to boards and even gave a few away as gifts.  I ended up keeping a few for myself and I wanted to put in an entry in the Staghorn Diary on the current state.  Below, you can see a photo of the one, larger Staghorn that is mounted to a flat board: Notably....it is NOT happy.  It is NOT thriving.  But, it is alive.  And has survived a battle with MOLD and moisture.  It has lost fronds.  Most of the tips have browned-up and curled.  But...we might have turned a corner.  We *might* have new growth emerging.  I dreamed of a life of Staghorn Ferns in our screened porch.  And this first year?  It has been rough. The interesting part is that the Staghorn that I gave my Mom?  It is thriving.  She has it laying on its back in a sunny, Western-exposure window.   I had a second, mounted fern (tiny) that has totally died.  I'm now left with two ferns in containers (left as a sort-of hedge) that I think I should try to

A few days ago, I received a new comment from a reader of my garden diary on this post all the way back in late May 2018 titled: " Frans Fontaine Hornbeam Planted - Hedgerow Spring 2018 ".  That post shows the eight columnar European Hornbeam trees that had been delivered and were being planted in our back and side yard to create (at that time, what I hoped to be) a privacy screen.  The comment - from JennyW - is here below: I've talked this before, but I write this daily online diary because I get joy out of doing it. I don't run advertisements.  I don't run sponsored content.  I also write for a pretty narrow audience - mostly myself.  I also look at the analytics data and know that there are really three audiences - in declining size order:   1.  The largest part of the audience: (mostly) one-time search readers (they search for something, click on the link and end up at my blog).   2.  Second biggest audience:  Referral.  This means that people are reading so

 We have 14 Karl Foerster Feather Reed Grasses planted in various places around our yard - five outside our kitchen window , four outside our screened porch, three in a little island between our driveway and front porch stairs and a pair planted 'in between two driveways" (IB2Ds).  I've posted photos of these various grasses on the blog over the years, but I wanted to drop a series of photos of these in the [garden diary] so I can track their progress. First up, four grasses planted outside of our screened porch.  I planted one back in 2018 because I had one too many.  But, last Fall, I added three more to make this a four-pack below:  Next up, three large grasses that were planted in 2017 before we moved in and our house was finished.  These are good-sized, but are experiencing (I think) a little bit of center-rot where the center part of these grasses is dying - and the recommended course of action is to dig up and divide.  Here's a look at these grasses in 2018 ,

 Yesterday, I checked in some Bressingham Blue hostas that were planted in 2018 as bare root plants and had now grown to be fully established and thriving.  In that post, I mentioned that there was a Japanese Painted Fern planted in between some of the hostas.  I figured that fern deserved a proper [ garden diary ] update for Summer 2020.  You can see the fern below - it is happy and healthy, despite being crowded by the hostas.   If you go back to the post showing when I bought and planted this fern in 2018 (bought for just $2 at Menards), I included a photo of the tag.  And that means that I can confirm this is a Pictum Japanese Painted fern.  My plan (as of yesterday) is to try to split up/divide the hostas this Fall to provide this fern with a little bit of space.   As for growth history, here's what I have: 2018 - planted in Spring . Looks like it struggled due to Summer + transplant stress, but also likely because I ignored it, but it came back after a little bit of wateri

Just yesterday, I posted a couple of photos of some newly emerged Frances Williams Hostas that I planted as tiny bare root plants from Costco . When I was out there taking photos of those new plants, I remembered that I had previously planted some bare root hostas - and wondered what their growth trajectory looked like.  So, I went over to the north side of the screened porch and found a grouping of three of the Bressingham Blue hostas that I planted as bare root plants in Spring 2018. That means that what you see in the photo above - a trio of Bressingham Blue hostas - grew like this: 2018 - Planted as bare root.  First growing season 2019 - Second growing season. 2020 - Third growing season.  I included a photo of these in a post in June 2020 . Note, the tops of the foliage reached the line where the foundation hits the house.   2021 - Fourth growing season.  Photo above.  You can see that they've grown in height and width.  And (in this photo) are starting to produce their flowe

Last Spring, our neighbors to the north began framing their house and once the window placements were set, I came to the realization that our row of Frans Fontaine Hornbeam trees were doing a pretty great job of screening between our houses.  But, there was an edge spot - closer to the front of the house - that was going to be exposed to one of their new windows.  So, on Earth Day 2020, we decided to plant a columnar flowering pear tree (yeah...I know.  they're not great trees.  But, I needed to put in something that was inexpensive, narrow in habit and, ummm, fast growing.  The Chanticleer Pear tree fit the bill . When I planted it , the tip top of the tree was right at the fence level.  But, by the time Fall came around , it had put on more than 18" to the top.  Have a peek at it in October of last year .   The tree was beginning to do its job.   I've had mixed luck with these trees.  I had a large (3"+ caliper) planted in our front yard in 2017.  It died that firs

Yesterday, I shared a photo of a newly cropped small fern that I tried to bring inside this Fall and promptly neglected .  I mentioned that I repotted it, fed it and the lopped off the dead stuff.  I've put it out on the screened porch in the hopes that between the moderate temperatures, the higher humidity (than inside) and the light, it will recover with some new growth.   In that post, I mentioned that this fern was the second transplant project from outside with the first one being successful.  Hence, me thinking I could revive the fern in the same way. *That* first successful transplant was a Wire Vine plant. (or Angel Vine). It is named Muehlenbeckia complexa and Nat had it out in one of our planters on our front porch this Summer.  We dug it up, transplanted it and...mostly forgot about it.  I noticed it was stressed, so I transplanted it, gave it some composted manure, watered it pretty good and gave it a haircut.  I lop'd off all of the shoots that were bare and cut

One of the girls bought a small/miniature fern for their fairy garden in the Summer of 2019 and I somehow was able to yank it out of the garden, pot it and keep it alive all last Winter into this past Spring.  When the warm weather arrived, I put the pot out on the back stoop and the fern seemed to be happy.  I brought it in this fall and promptly neglected it.  I came across it and noticed that it was dried out, brittle and rootbound.  I repotted it and moved it to something larger, fed it with some composted manure and put it out on the screened porch.  It looked like this after repotting: It isn't happy looking.  That's (I think) a combination of neglect and the stress of coming inside to deal with the dry, indoor air and what I'm guessing is some level of dormancy-induced decline due to Winter.  All of the leaves are dry and a lot of the fronds are brittle.  If you pinch them and slide up/down, you can peel off the leaves on about 1/3rd of the fronds.   I decided to do

Back at the end of April, we planted a tree on Earth Day outside of our screened porch.  It is a Chanticleer Pear - which, I know....I know...isn't the best tree to be planting in our landscape, but we were facing a set of circumstances that warranted this approach.  Our neighbors to the north were building their house all this calendar year and while we had planted our row of eight Frans Fontaine European Columnar Hornbeams to provide screening from our back patio and screened porch , we planted them without knowing where the house was going to be built.   By Earth Day, the new house next door had the framing done and - much to our surprise - we had *most* of their windows screened with trees.  But, there was ONE new window - closer to the front of the house that was basically unblocked by the Frans Fontaine Hornbeams. Have a look at this post from back in April - where you can see the window I'm talking about . And now, have a look at the same view as it looks now - in late O

Yesterday, I posted a couple of photos of a lot of the three face cords of firewood that we had delivered earlier this week.  Those three racks are a combo of Birch, Cherry and Oak Firewood and two of them were built this Summer in preparation for the delivery.  In that post , I mentioned that there are the two additional - indoor racks - that I also filled.  This post shows off those two racks. Well...it shows off all of one of them (the one in the background that is loaded with Birch) and half of the rack in the foreground (That is loaded with Cherry firewood).  The rack in the foreground is a two-level rack - you can see what the full thing looks like here - but we're using the top section as a sort-of plant stand with various potted plants.  So, for now, we're only filling this rack about half-way.  When the weather turns, I'm sure we'll move the plants indoors and I'll take that top part of the rack and fill it with Oak firewood.  That way, we'll hav

Back in June, I posted a photo of the one Japanese Painted Fern that we have next to our screened porch and talked about how - after leaving it almost exclusively ALONE for the past two years, it. seems to have established itself and is doing well. Today, I'm sharing another photo at the top of this post showing what it looks like in the heat of the Summer.  It has grown bigger and more full.  And it now has me thinking that when I come across MORE of them - or if I seek them out - I should buy and plant a series of them along the fenceline -underneath the Frans Fontaine Hornbeam trees.  I've had good luck with Ostrich Ferns, but they start to look kinda shabby later in the Summer and I've recently planted a Lady Fern - so I'm not sure how that will look once mature.  But, I do love the look of this Japanese Painted Fern in it's full Summer glory and think they'd look nice mixed in with some hostas under the trees .  I have a gift card from Wannemake

Back in the Spring of 2018, I planted a couple of ferns on the northside of our house, outside our screened porch in what is pretty deep shade.  One of them was a Japanese Painted Fern .  That's what you see at the top of this post.  It has come back this year and seems to have established itself despite me not paying a lick of attention to it over the past two years. After planting them, they suffered - through transplant shock + lack of attention.  But, they sprung back and showed some life at the end of their first season .    I had planted a hosta in between them that you can see in that post from September of 2018 . I caught this fern a year later - September of 2019 when it was happy and showing off it's green and purple fronds .  Today, it seems to be doing just fine in the shade.  The other fern that I planted two years ago?  I don't see it, unfortunately.  But, there are a few hostas that have joined this one that you can see below: In the photo above

One of the traditions that I've enjoyed keeping up with each year with our kids is the annual Earth Day planting of a tree in our yard.  We started with one - a Dawn Redwood in 2017 - that we planted in our new lot while our house was being built.  This was a few months before the construction was going to be done.   The next year - 2018 - we planted three Earth Day trees. One for each kid.  We did a weeping cherry (that we lost), a Red Maple Sun Valley tree that we planted all the way in the back and a flowering pear tree that we planted on the south fence line .  Those two have survived since then, but they were VERY small trees.  I wasn't measuring them at the time, but when I measured them in January of this year (which would have made these 1.75 years *in the ground* at our house), the maple was just .87" caliper and the Chanticleer Pear was up to 1.20".   They were similar when we put them in, so guess it was something like .65" or .70" when p

The favorite spot of Natalie each morning during the late Spring, Summer and early Fall is in one place in our house:  our screened porch.  I can find her out there most of the time enjoying a cup of coffee, reading her kindle or sorting through her email. But the season isn't too terribly long.  In fact, it has been more than a month that she's been out there and that's too bad.  However, our neighbors have seemed to solve this and made their screened porch a lot more like a real 3 season room and less like a screened porch. They installed these things called Eze-Breeze windows .  They are these '4 track' windows that are made up of what I'd call something akin to shower curtains.  You can move the panels up and down and have the screens open to the rest of the space.  Here's a shot from the Eze Breeze website that shows how far you can push the windows: These windows really cut down the wind in a big way.  They don't quite seal the whole p

Just two weeks ago, I shared a photo in my ongoing tracking of our firewood consumption and mentioned that we had mostly exhausted our Fall supply of Cherry and Birch that we had delivered and stacked in our screened porch and side porch.  This photo you see above is from a week or so ago after we had a second, late-Winter delivery of another Facecord of firewood from Best Firewood in Aurora.  This would be the third Facecord of wood that we've worked through since early October.  That's four months - at approximately 1/2 of a Facecord per month.  The supplier that we use has a different type and caliber of wood available in late January/early February vs. what they have in September and October.  So, this order included a wood that we haven't bought before:  Oak.   This is a Facecord that is split 50/50 between Oak and Cherry.  But, the Cherry is *different* than the Cherry we had delivered in October.  If you look at the rack in on the right, you will see the to

I planted two different ferns on the northside of our screened porch earlier this Summer.  That post with the full details can be found here in the garden diary .  One of them (Autumn Fern) was planted on the left of this transplanted hosta and one of them (Japanese Painted Fern) was planted on the right.  If you look back at the post when I planted these , the hosta in the middle wasn't there yet and we didn't even have our mulch for the season, so I planted these in some clay. They both immediately sufferend.  Dried out.  Figured they were dead.  Only thing I lost was the two bucks apiece, I figured. Well, on a recent walk around the screened porch, what did I discover?  That both of these ferns have made a comeback of sorts!  They're both green, and have shoots popping through the mulch.  Amazing!  You can see their little beings on the far sides of this photo.  Incredible, right??  Well, maybe not to you, but this is an incredible sight to me.  Hey...thanks, Audr