Why I Oughta...

A few days ago, I posted some sad photos of the small Canadian Hemlock trees that have been devoured by some freakin' rabbits in our backyard this Winter.  After I spotted that damage, I wanted to take a closer look at some of the other shrubs in our yard to see if there's more damage that occured between when we put the yard to bed for the Winter and now when it is starting to 'wake up'.  Unfortunately, I found more.  Both rabbit damage.  And Winter damage.  Let's start with this Hicks upright yew.  It is the one on the northern edge of the hedge.  And is the only one that has this much winter damage.  For history, I bought these Hicks Yews in July and planted them in the ground shortly thereafter.  This hedge (or...eventual hedge) is part of my 2020 " Priority Area 3 ' from my recent planning series.  This post is now part of my Winter Damage Series , I guess.  Full tag of posts here . It includes this post on our Front boxwood bronzing from

This past weekend, I wandered in the back part of our yard and was stunned to see the bare trunks of our tiny Canadian Hemlock trees.  They have been totally ravaged by what I presume to be rabbits.  Freaking rabbits.  Last year, I planted six small (like 18" tall) Canadian Hemlocks in two spots of the yard.  We lost one of them before Winter , but the other five appeared fine before Winter. Today, the three in the very back are the ones I'm posting about and two of them have been totally attacked.  One of them you can see above with just the trunk remaining along with few lower branches.   This is the first real set of animal or critter damage that I've see on the trees in our yard. It is interesting...I've noticed that almost every morning when I take Lizzie out, we have a pair of rabbits that are hanging in our yard.  Up until now, I thought that was nice to see the wildlife.  I mean...we're feeding the birds and squirrels, so I assume that the rabbits a

I was out in the yard recently wiring up that one errant trunk on the Saucer Magnolia and snapped a couple of photos of our front yard boxwoods.  You can see them above and you'll note that a few of them are showing quite a bit of brown/orange color on them.  Wondering if this is normal Winter behavior or something else.  I also note that they're all experiencing different amounts of this orange/rust coloring.  The first boxwood on the left is the most orange - and you can see a photo of this one below: The ones further North - which start to get out of the top photo are the most green.  The end one (on the North) has a 'hole' in it that was from some damage the previous few Winters.  See that one below that shows an orange section that has a large gaping 'hole' behind it.  The first time that I posted a photo of these boxwoods was in May of 2018 in this post about mulch .  You can tell that these have grown in size in the (almost) two years sinc

I was out puttering around the yard on a mild Winter day recently doing a little bit of bud inspection to see what trees had put off when I found this break in this Japanese Kwanzan Flowering Cherry Tree in the backyard.  I bought this tree in May of 2017 when it was a small (maybe .75" caliper) tree from Menards after I had just come back from my first trip to Tokyo where I saw *their* Cherry Blossom trees.  The tree (in the garden center at Menards) caught my eye because it was flowering these beautiful, puffy, almost-peony-like pink flowers . At the end of June/early July of 2017, right when we were moving into our house in Downers Grove, I got around to planting the tree in the yard .  About half-way back in the yard, on the southside of the property.  Not sure, exactly why it ended up there.  Just *felt* right at the time.  Looking at the tree now, I think it is in a good spot and the placement ended up being appropriate. The first season it was in the ground - Spring

In November, I posted about how I had applied a second coat of concrete sealer to our driveway in an attempt to preserve it as best I can .  Part of that preservation is also trying to NOT use rock salt on it to melt ice and snow.  That's a best practice - not using salt - that was shared by our builder, but you can also find it online all over the place.    Some folks call salt the "#1 enemy of concrete" .  So, I try to take care of my driveway without salt or any other melting products.  The issue is that our driveway is on an incline.  You might not be able to tell from this photo , but we're uphill from the street to our driveway. Have you ever come across a concrete driveway that looks like this ?  Pitted and full of pockmarks?  That's very often because of salt damage.  From this story : The pock marks are likely from rock salt deterioration on your concrete drive. It can be caused by using rock salt (sodium chloride) to melt ice on your drive, or c

One of the items on  my 2019 gardening to-do list (addendum)  was to make sure I got around to wiring up the new Gold Cone Junipers that I planted this Spring.   When  I picked them up , I was drawn to the promise of their bright needles and how they filled a big part of my desire to add conifers to our landscape.  In  that original post , I referenced how a pro-gardener recommended that these particular junipers get wired up to avoid any sort of Winter/snow damage.  That's what this post is for:  documenting that I actually wired them.  The top photo shows one of the Gold Cone Junipers all wired up with a green coated metal garden wire.  Compare that photo above with the photo of the same shrub  in this photo .  I tucked in all the leggy new growth and bound it to the core of the plant.  Here's a closer look at the wire:  The shrub in the foreground is wired up.  The one in the background is not (yet!). There were seven items on  my 'to-do list addendum