Why I Oughta...

Seems like this is the week for (finally) some action in our garden/yard that indicates Spring is actually arriving.  Yesterday, I posted a photo of what I think is a 'clump' 1 of Ostrich Ferns.  Today, let's talk about bulbs.   Last October, I planted 50 Tulip bulbs in one of our beds out in front of the porch, just underneath a giant Norway Maple .  At the time, I did my best to protect them from various critters, but as time went on, I noticed some digging in the area.  Between the skunks looking for grubs and perhaps squirrels with their eyes on the actual bulbs, somebody was pretty active shortly after I planted these bulbs.   And the soil?  I've talked about the soil we have close to our foundation.  It is terrible right now.  All clay.  If you read my Top 10 2019 Spring/Summer Gardening To-Do List , you'll remember that #1 on my list was to continue to improve the soil .  But, I've only have had one full garden season to work the soil and the

I was out back cleaning up some things and I came across this clump of plant life that was sticking out of the ground.  I was about to step on it when I noticed it amongst a bunch of leaves and what I think is leaf mold.  In looking at it, I'm pretty sure it is a clump of pre-furl'd fern fronds.  This clump is all the way in the back of the property close to where the kids climb a tree.  When climbing there, they also stomp around on plants and things, so I'm going to mark this with a stick or something to keep the kids away from it when the weather warms up. What makes me unsure if this is a fern is the location.  I planted a whole bunch of stuff that we took out of my sister-in-law's lot before she tore her house down .  One of those items was a big fern that I transplanted that seemed to take last year , but that was on the other side of the lot. I'll keep an eye on this to see if I'm correct and this is, indeed a fern clump.  This is an area of deep s

Since my trip to the Tokyo Disney Resort, I've posted a bunch of times showing some of the  highlights and items that I brought back home including this pin marking the 35th Anniversary Celebration of the resort and the latest versions of the two park maps  and the resort-specific bandaids - which I love.  But none of the things that I brought home top this:  the fleece Winnie the Pooh Bear blanket or cape or shawl with a hood.  My middle child has a snuggle pal of Pooh Bear that she adores and after seeing this, I couldn't come home without it.    I mean...come on, right?  Just 'adorbies', as she says.  Nat took this photo and I couldn't help but share it here on the blog. I found this product photo on this ebay listing that shows how it lays out: Those dots are snaps that bring it together in the front.  I think they technically list it as a 'wearable blanket', but I'd rather call it a cape.  They had a bunch of characters like Mickey/M

We've had a SquirrelBuster Plus tube feeder for a number of years.  Nat bought it for me for my birthday sometime in the past five or six years.  And for the most part, I have loved the feeder.  With our current setup, I've mostly been using a small mix of seed including thistle seeds in this feeder because we've had larger, seed and nut-based mixes in our fly-through feeder .  The song birds seem to hanging out at the fly-through mostly.  The peckers and nut thatches spend their time on the suet cages.  And the little finches and sparrows and others seem to be using the tube feeder.    Here's a post from here on the blog showing an American Goldfinch perched on the feeder outside our kitchen windows.  It was working just fine back then.  But recently, I've noticed that the SquirrelBuster is emptying really rapidly.  In about a day.  And I'm assuming that a squirrel is getting to it and shaking.  For most of its life, this feeder served it's name:  it bu

I was out at the Walmart with one of the kids on a recent weekend and I naturally wandered into the garden section.  They didn't have the outside part open yet, but the inside was being stocked up for all your Spring and Summer needs.  There were pots of all various shapes and sizes, bags of soil and down at the end of the garden center was this display of tools.  They had pruners and clippers and shovels.  But they also had this:  a folding saw.  (oh...and yeah..there's a blade sharpener, too!  But, for this post, let's focus on the folding saw.) Our yard is full of medium and some very mature trees.  Oaks and Maples.  And they loose a lot of little branches and limbs.  So, every Spring (and frankly...all Summer long), our yard is full of sticks.  Plenty of them are small little things.  I can crack them in two with my hands and I throw them in one of the fireplaces.  But others are larger and I can't handle them well.  I don't own an axe - either a large on

As the weather started to warm up, I was able to get out into the yard to do some late Winter pruning on a bunch of items around the yard.  I cleaned up the hydrangeas, used a new extension pruner (more on this at some point) to clip off some water spouts on trees way up in the air and even tended to this pair of Linden trees that we've espalier'd into a horizontal cordon.  Here's a post from September of 2017 where I shared photos and description of the wire setup .  The photo at the top of this post shows the state of these two trees before any pruning.  It is hard to really see all of the cordons or arms, so here's an annotated photo showing the position and lengths of the arms/limbs:  The Greenspire Linden on the left has four levels of cordons and the one on the right has what I'll call 4.5 levels.  I decided to try to prune off the top - what I found out is known as the " apical meristem " in an attempt to drive more growth into the existin

For the past 10+ years, I've been sitting at this desk for a couple of days each week.   And by calling it a 'desk', I might be being generous.  It is really a table.  With two tiny, slim drawers.  But, I call it my 'desk' when I refer to it.  "Put it on my desk."  Or "I think it is on my desk."  Nat bought it at West Elm when we were first moving into our old house.  When she bought it, I was setting up a tiny home office.  Upstairs in what would become our little nursery outside of our master bedroom.  It is a stable, even surface.  And compact in size.  When #1 arrived, I relocated downstairs to a first floor bedroom that was larger.  But, the small desk was going with me.  And there it lived for seven or so years.  After a few years in storage, we moved it into my new office in our new house.  Until now.  Nat found me a new desk - a desk that I've admired but figured was out of our league price-wise.  But, thanks to the Crate and