Why I Oughta...

On a recent visit to Northwind Perennial Farm in Wisconsin, I found myself face-to-face with a table of Sedum plants.  Stonecrop is what some may call them.  They're NOT new plants in general and not necessarily new to me, either.  I had some inherited Sedum in our house in Elmhurst that seemed to do just fine along the driveway.  Didn't think about them much then.  And haven't thought about them much now.   We also have some Angelina Sedum that I really like in a few spots.  But, these more upright sedum?   Don't have them in our garden, but that doesn't mean I can't 'get to know' them a little bit, right? Below are signs for three:  Neon, Karl and Stardust.  The sign for the Neon variety says a lot (to me):  We've been buying Sedum since the 1970's.   Lol.  The Stardust sign is even better:  This is an upright sedum with white flowers.  Go find a spot.  Another LOL. For me, the Neon and Star...

 This is the second new (to us) perennial that we recently planted that came from Roy Diblik's Northwind Perennial Farm.  I'll admit that I made one of the core gardening mistakes ( don't buy just one of anything ) with both of these recent additions, but these were picked out from the shade section by my middle child.  This post is about Alchemilla mollis 'Auslese' - or Ladys Mantle.  The sign at Northwind is below and points out that this works in part shade, has yellow flowers and spreads out to about 20".  It also calls out the scalloped, grey-green foliage. And, here below, is our pint-sized plant.  Of note, after just a few days home, I've come to realize that this thing needs to be watered regularly.   So, what, exactly is this?  Is it like a Heuchera?  Is it ground cover?  (If so, it would count towards my 2022 to-do list goal around groundcover, right?) The University of Wisconsin Horticulture Extension has a page up about ...

Ah, yes.  The King of Clubs cold pack cheese.  We meet once again.  Do you like Merkt's?  Then, you'll fall head-over-heels for King of Clubs.  It is - for me - the best of the cold pack cheeses on the market.  I first posted about it in 2017 and have made a trip to the Mars Cheese Castle on the regular ever since.  King of Clubs is the house spread of the Mars Cheese Castle and comes in 2#  and 5# pails .  Yeah...pails.  ( ...at least that's what I call them.  They're technically called 'tubs' on the Mars site, but if you're buying five pounds of cold pack cheese spread, then that's coming in a pail. ) There's no shrinkflation going on with the King of Clubs.  16 ounces is still 16 ounces.   If you find yourself stopping at the Mars Cheese Castle on your way up to Wisconsin (and...let's be honest...you're going to stop, right?), grab a one pounder of the King of Clubs Sharp Cheddar.  Even if it isn't your thing...

The last time I posted photos of the tray of Kentucky Coffee Tree Seedlings was in May of this year when they were just emerging from Winter dormancy and putting on some leaflets .   I overwintered this tray of native tree seedlings by digging them in the ground and wrapping chicken wire around the base to protect them from the dang rabbits.  That seemed to work.   I've kept all of the seedlings in their original small (quart) nursery containers so far and have put the tray underneath a large Oak tree to provide filtered light.  And...get them watered when I water the perennials in the area.  Here, below, is what the tray of seedlings look like in mid-August 2022: By my count, I see eleven small KCT seedlings.  And one Elm tree.  And some other weed. This is their second full growing season and they've all had their stems/trunks put on real wood.  They're all very small, still.  And...they seem to have outgrown their containers an...

The largest park in Walworth County that runs a few hundred acres and gives visitors the ability to get down close to the White River during all seasons.  On this recent Winter visit, the River was a mix of frozen and moving.  I visited (and posted) about this very park last year in mid-January .   If you get off the main trail a bit, you can get down to enjoy the sights and sounds.  This visit was a reminder about being 'present'.  Spend a few minutes listening to the running river and you can forget about whatever is on your mind - both past and future.  And just be present.  Jimmy V's famous speech talked about doing three things everyday:  "Number one is laugh. Number two is think -- spend some time time in thought. Number three, you should have your emotions move you to tears." This sure feels like a spot to do #2:  spend some time in thought.  Our visit to Walworth County feels like a good reminder to do all three everyday....

I've mentioned that we've now traveled up to Wisconsin the past couple of years to cut down Christmas trees after the place we had been going down in Braidwood stopped being fun.  The farm is called Evergreen Acres and they opened in 1975 .  It is a great place.  We bought both of our trees there this year - Family Room and Green Room trees.   When you check out of Evergreen Acres, they give you a little business card that serves as your receipt.  If you know me at all, you know that I'm likely to complain about the costs of things.  I'm pretty sure I live in a fantasy world where I think things and services should cost way less than they should.  We've been looking for a fridge for our basement for a year.  I have a certain price in my mind that I want to hit - in order to buy a fridge.  And, we have a particular format (French door, if you must know) that we (I) want.  I've shopped it.  And shopped it.  And, haven't fo...

We have twelve clumps of Summer Beauty Allium ( Allium angulosum 'Summer Beauty' ) in our backyard that were planted in 2020.  In two batches:  first a group of four , then eight more .  They're now placed in a colony of five and a colony of seven.  Odd numbers is what other gardeners always recommend. All of them have done well this year and I'm happy to see them about to burst open and put on their mid-Summer show.  They disappear over Winter, but put out this lovely dark green foliage that stays green at the tips.  Here's a look at them emerging from the mulch in late March of this year .   The drift of five is planted at the base of the Greenspire Linden horizontal cordon espalier - you can see them below.  The photo looks like there is four, but there's one behind #3 (from the left) in the back row against the fence.  Head here and scroll to the bottom of the post to see the original four plantings with one kind of 'behind' the ot...

We packed the kids and their sleds in the car and spent an hour or so out at the White River County Park in Walworth County a couple of weeks ago .  The photo at the top is the hill that greets you as you walk down from the parking lot towards the river.  If you look closely at the top of the photo, you'll see the river winding around the bend.  If you were pretty streamlined and had a good push, you could *ALMOST* reach the river by sled from the top of the hill.   This is the county's largest park and is located just 10 minutes or so away from Lake Geneva. From the county's website : After we hit the hill a few times with the sleds, we took the kids for a little snow hike down the trail that is adjacent to the White River.  We didn't get far, but we did see people doing it right - with snowshoes and cross country skis. Back near the parking lot, there's a large barn - not sure if it is in service, but it looks like it was original the property.  Here...

  I've been going with Nat and her family to cut down Christmas trees the day after Thanksgiving for 15 years.  And in that time, we've gone to a place down in Wilmington called Tammen Treeberry Farm.  When we moved into our house in Downers, Nat decided to have two trees inside.  One smaller one for the front room and a larger one for our family room.  That worked fine in theory.  But, what we found down at Tammen Tree farm was that they had a good selection of small and medium-sized trees.  However, they lacked in what I'd call "larger" trees.   That meant that last year, we called an audible and ONLY bought one tree down at Tammen.  We ended up buying the second - "larger" tree that was pre-cut from Wannemaker's in town here .  And with that decision, we paid *double* what they were charging down at Tammen, but we had a really lovely tree.   This year, Nat's folks decided to try something new.  A trip to a whole ne...

On a recent hike up in Wisconsin at Big Foot State Park - right on the coast of Lake Geneva - the kids and I came across a Geocache box.  We, umm, stumbled upon it.   We were walking on the "Nature Trail" (there are a few different trails there - red, blue, yellow, etc...including a short "Nature Trail" that takes you from one of the main lots down to the bogs/ponds on the shore of the lake. Here are the two kids holding up their treasure: We're (currently) not geocachers.  But, I looked up this package on geoaching.com .  There's this listing : This geocache has been hidden as a part of the Wisconsin Geocaching Association's State Park series. This geocache is hidden on the Nature Trail, just off of the Red Hiking Trail. I wonder if I'll ever amend that (currently) to the description above.   We'll see if the kids want to find more. 

We were out walking around Elizabeth Lake in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin a couple of weekends back and we came across this setup near Sunset Park.  It is out near the waterline and is kind of set back from the park.  But, because it is shiny, metallic and has that big solar panel and the antenna, it sticks out.  We walked up to it and the sticker on the front told us what it is.  See below: It is a Crest-Stage Gaging Station operated by the US Geological Survey (USGS).  The sticker goes on to read: This station is part of a national network for obtaining water-resources information.  The high-water mark recorded by this gage and the discharge of the stream related to it are use for flood forecasting, reservoir operations, design of bridges and culverts, interstate and intrastate water-rights claims and many other projects. It ends with:  for information contact: (nobody). So, I went digging.  And turns out, the USGS runs a nice little dashb...

One of the activities that we've been doing with the kids this Summer is spending time on walks (or...maybe some of you call them 'hikes') in state parks, on trails and in the forests.  I hesitate to call them hikes because there's VERY little elevation change and we're walking on trails.  After reading this piece about the difference between walking and hiking , I'm actually NOT SURE what we do.  But, it doesn't really matter.  We've been all pulling up our tall socks, putting on our sneakers and going out on paths.  Both in Illinois (Waterfall Glen) and Wisconsin (Bong and Big Foot , mostly), we get out on trails and spend and hour or two getting into nature with the kids.  On one of our recent trips, Nat found a place called "Burlington School Forest" - which we had driven past a few times.  Turns out, the local school district (K-12) in Burlington Wisconsin keeps a forest area for their students.  From the school district's site ...

It has been a while since I covered a new Wisconsin club cheese - with the last one being back in 2018 .  That club cheese was from the Cheese Box in Lake Geneva ; which we haven't been back to as they're taking the pandemic pretty seriously and are only doing curbside.  In terms of my favorite(s), the King of Clubs from Mars takes the top slot .  I found the Bucky Badger stuff to be right up, there, too. They both are smooth and spreadable.  Just like my gateway drug: Merkts. This post is about Kraemer Cold Pack Cheese that Nat picked up at a roadside stand.  I think she was there buying corn and saw this and grabbed a container of it - because...well...she's the best. I opened it up and it was a little bit 'crumbly'.  Kinda like the Glas natural cold pack cheese - that stuff is very crumbly.   But, I liked this Kraemer Cold Pack Cheese Food more than Glas.  Kinda funny that they call it a "Cold Pack Cheese Food" - not just simply...

The sky was full of pinks and purples as we stood on the pier and took in the magic of the twilight sky.  This is what I'll call a midway point in the series - is it a series?  - that started with sunrise at Sunset Park (terribly named) back in June of 2020 .  Like a lot of lakes, Elizabeth Lake is dealing with Eurasian Watermilfoil - an invasive plant that takes over.  We had it up in Coloma on Paw Paw Lake , too.   It is a common 'hitchhiker' that is brought from lake to lake hung up on props and trailers.  The weeds on Elizabeth Lake have been something this year - maybe that's due to the water temperatures? Or, maybe that's just how things are these days. 

When we used to go to Michigan, we tried to incorporate Michigan-based foodstuffs into our rotation like this local Michigan beet sugar , local potato chips and these Koegel's hot dogs from (wait for it....Flint, Michigan).  Since we transitioned to Wisconsin, we've done some of the same - and I've chronicled both on-going and one-off Wisconsin foodstuffs like this local root beer , various cheeses ,  New Glarus beer and...of course... the King of Clubs cold pack club cheese .  There's a new entrant from the Usinger's Sausage company:  Mr. Baseball's Famous Franks Beef Frankfurters.  That's Bob Uecker for those non-sports folks (or...really....non Sports-movies people as my introduction to Bob Uecker was as Harry Doyle in the Major League Movie s and that Miller Lite Beer commercial - "must be in the front row! ").  He does the radio call for the Milwaukee Brewers , so it is a natural to see him involved in hot dogs, right?  Hot dogs and b...

Thanks to the fine folks who are tuning the Night Sight feature on Google's Pixel devices , I was able to capture this night sky reigning high above this mighty Wisconsin Oak Tree.  You can see some of the stars brightly lit up behind the large and wandering limbs of this old Oak Tree.  I'm certain that I could have gotten an even better photo, but it was cold at night, and I was wearing my house shoes.  So, that meant that I had to get to the edge of the porch and just *aim high*. 

A couple of weekends back, we took the kids to Richardson Adventure Farm up near the Illinois/Wisconsin border for some - you know - "Fall Fun".  This place has pig races, corn cannons, jumpy houses, zip lines, little rides and...the "World's Largest Corn Maze".  This year's theme is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo program.  We decided to try one of the smallest sections with the kids and they provided us a tip:  "take every left turn".  We did that and ended up at the exit in short order.  How do they make these mazes?  Sounds like there's a technology-enabled GPS way .  And a different, more old-fashioned way .  The Richardson folks also run a tree farm that we visited to check out as a potential option for trees this year.  More on that in another post. 

Up at the Lake Geneva Walmart the KotBT found this Cheesehead and couldn't resist trying it on.  He said that they have one of these in the 'costume trunk' at his pre-school so he knew what it was immediately.   Are you surprised that they're $22?  I don't know why, but that struck me as being more than I figured they were going for around Wisconsin? This is the same Walmart - about 15 minutes away from Twin Lakes - that sells the cases of Spotted Cow , the Bucky Badger Club Cheese and where we both picked up our fishing license and spotted Chicago Alderman Ed Burke with his security detail looking over a kayak .  Of course, I didn't let the boy get the cheesehead.  Nevermind the price.  We are with Da Bears in our house.  Doesn't mean we don't love us some Wisconsin Cheese like the King of Clubs .  Just not the Cheeseheads. 

This mighty Oak tree came down in what is being billed as a "Microburst" storm up in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin last month.  We arrived the day *after* the storm.  Or...I suppose, the day *of* the storm since it hit at like 12:30 am.  The folks at the Kenosha News covered the aftermath and concurred with a meteorologist who billed the event a microburst . From their piece : A small area of Twin Lakes was hit by high winds that took down trees and left many residents without power early Thursday.  ...Aidan Kuroski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sullivan, said that a “microburst” storm with straight line winds estimated at 70 to 80 mph hit the area at about 12:30 a.m. “It was a very concentrated area,” Kuroski said. “Basically from Elkhorn and Walworth County down to Twin Lakes.”  Kuroski said the storm developed so quickly the National Weather Service did not have time to issue a storm warning. The storm produced some damage around...

And, is "spring fed".  Based on this flyer that the Twin Lakes Sailing Club tossed on the dock.  They used fruit snacks to weigh it down - which was kinda cute. Paw Paw Lake in Coloma, Michigan is 4,300 acres.  7x the size. I'd been trying to figure out how they compared and now, thanks to the Twin Lakes Sailing Club's brochure....I have my answer. Also, fun fact, it is technically "Elizabeth Lake".  And according to Wikipedia , Elizabeth Lake was named for Elizabeth Barrett Browning, an English poet.  Who, I'm guessing never visited the lake.