Why I Oughta...

Nat and I are proud to be a part of the Host Committee for a Tom Cross for Illinois Treasurer fundraiser that is taking place on Wednesday June 11th in Frankfort. For those of you who don't know Tom Cross, he's running for Illinois State Treasurer.   I've worked for Tom earlier in my career and know him to be a honorable, trustworthy man.  He's exactly the type of elected official we need to clean up Springfield and Illinois. You can find out more about Tom Cross here on his Treasurer site . We'd love for you to join us for this event.  If you're interested in attended, drop me a line!  Alternatively, if you want to donate to the event, click here to visit this link which will track your donation coming in from me .

We now have three hops vines in our side yard.  The one pictured here is - by far - the biggest and was planted back in 2012 .  It is a Golden variety.  Over on the far right of this photo, you can see another trellis'd vine - that's a Cascade variety, one of the other two we have growing. Last year, I was pretty bummed out that we didn't get any fruit off the Golden, but I've committed to staying on top of the plant with water and care, so I'm hopeful I'll be able to turn over to my brother-in-laws a bucket full of green hops come this fall.

I put down three of these Sedum plants behind the fireplace in the backyard this past weekend.  Marking the spot here to document when/where they were put in.

Here's the full photos (below) of the varieties that the girls and I planted this week right in front of our fence line on the south side of our house. It is a nice mix of some giant ones and some smaller, more colorful varieties. Here's a post on last year's sunflowers .   It looks like some of them re-seeded themselves as we had a few seedlings coming up in the same spot this year. And... here's a post from 2011 showing the annual sunflower planting .

I put down these three bulbs on the north side of our house along the walk as that's where our 'shade garden' is growing these days.  They're supposed to pop up this summer, so we'll have to wait and see what happens.  I've had mixed results with flowering shade bulbs, but I'm eternally hopeful.  (aren't all gardeners?!?)

My 'shade garden' grows.  I picked up these Storm Seas bulbs at Costco and put them in the ground this weekend on the northside of our house next to the hostas and ferns.    They're supposed to be a hearty bunch (much like a hosta), so I'm hoping they'll produce some nice (non-green) color on this side of the yard.

Last week, we went to Menards to pick up some plants and I'll be honest:  we were a little disappointed with their selection.  They don't seem to have given a lot of care to the plants and many were already dried out. In the shade section, however, they had some nice hosta varieties that were thriving.  I picked up three kinds - mostly so I could have a firm grasp on the differences between the ones in our yard. First is the Brim Cup Plaintain Lily.  Has nice yellow tips.   Planted a few of these on the west side of the fence on the northside of the house in the shade of the Cleveland Pear Tree and south of the walk.   Next is the Great Expectations.  Light green variations on the center of the plant.  Planted these on the northside, both east/west of the fence.  One in particular is right on the walk in the backyard on the north of the walk. Finally, is the Fragrant Blue Hosta.  We have some of these around, but I wanted to add a new one for comparison.  This