Why I Oughta...

The reforestation continues.  When we bought the lot in Downers Grove, we knew we were going to have to take down some trees due to construction.  The Village of Downers Grove forced us to invest in quite a bit of infrastructure in the name of water management and one of the outcomes of that (digging and placing a big basin, connecting it down to the sewers, etc) was that we took down eight to ten pretty mature trees. Because of that fact and the idea that we want a private, good looking property, we've undertaken quite a bit of planting of trees in what I'm calling a 'reforestation'.  In the first year (2017), we planted exclusively deciduous trees.  Nine total.  We ended up losing three of them, so that's a net of six.  This year (2018), we've planted twelve in total.  That's 21 total, but only one of them (the weeping cedar) is a conifer or evergreen. Number 22 changes that.  Above, you'll see our first traditional evergreen - a Fraser Fir.  We

Wowsa.  Look at this beauty!  This is the Vuurvogel Firebird Semi Cactus Dahlia that I planted (indoors at first) all the way back in March .  This bloom, on the very top, is the biggest and most advanced, but there are a handful of others that are following closely behind.  I've kept the pot watered consistently and spent more than a week hardening this off by putting it outside for a few hours during the day and increasing the time outside over the course of two weeks until I finally left it out overnight.   The only concern that I have now is that I might have planted these in too small of a pot.  Nat pointed out recently that as the dahlias have grown, they've consumed most of the space.  And, add to the fact that I planted an elephant ear in the same pot, it all means that there's space issue.  The elephant ear is slowly growing up, but I have to think the dahlia is starving it for air/space/food/water.   I haven't tried (yet!) to pull, dry and store

We were up in Twin Lakes recently and as we pulled out of the driveway, we saw these guys.  No...not the geese in the background.  I'm talking about the bright red birds.  They were small, finch-like with black wings.  But super vibrant red body and head. I haven't come across birds like this before, so off to the Field Guide I went.  And found this:  the Scarlet Tanager.  From the book: "Migrants (late April - May, Late August - early October) are fairly common and can be found nearly anywhere.)   Checks out. 

If you look around here on the blog, you might have noticed a little bit of updates.  Call it 'Spring Cleaning', but a few weeks ago, I ended up updating the fonts site-wide to Roboto, tweaked some of the colors (Blog title, tags, tabs) and added a header photo.  You can see the screenshot of the blog above that includes that header photo of the new set of Frans Fontaine Hornbeam Trees that I recently put in. The last time that I update the look of the blog was back in March of 2017 when I added this responsive template that was mostly blue . While this isn't an exhaustive look at the process, this is the (at least) 11th documented version of the blog over the years.  Here are the first nine versions of screenshots that I have from 2004 to 2016 .  And here's the 10th and most recent .  The fonts are an improvement (imho - and that's 'humble' for sure, btw !), but the real improvement is the header photo.  It personalizes the site a bit, as one of Na

Back at the end of April, I posted a photo of the new Mason Bee House that my sister gave me for my birthday.  I hung it on our fence, on the north fence line down in the low spot of our yard - which due to the swails/drainage means that's the spot that has the most moisture.  Hence...access to mud.  It also gets morning and mid-day sun. Which are all the components for a good placement (access to mud, stable location and partial sun) of a Mason Bee House. And, much to my surprise, I've found that the house is being occupied!  Yeah...at least some of the chambers are filled.  Look closely at the photo above, you'll see some of the bamboo cavities are filled with mud.  That means there's larvae behind them. Here's a marked up version of the house showing the filled chambers. I count 14 little bees behind mud and based on what I read online , these things will live inside those chambers for close to a year and will emerge in the Spring of 2019.

Welp, it is official:  Our Chanticleer Flowering Pear tree out front by our garage is gone.  I n February of this year, I posted a photo and an update on this tree and speculated that I thought it was dead, but we wanted to wait until Spring arrived to see if it came back.  The bad news is marked with that pink spray paint on the trunk:  marked for removal.  I've had (now) maybe seven or eight of these trees over the years and this is one of three we have here in Downers Grove and this is the only one that gave us any trouble what-so-ever.  This one is a 3" caliper, so it is a more mature tree while the rest of them have been 1" or less caliper versions, so they might have had a better shot at catching on.  It is being replaced like-for-like with another of the same variety.  I'll post photos of the new tree once it goes in the ground. 

Yesterday, I shared a photo of our eight Frans Fontaine European Hornbeam 2.5" caliper trees that had been delivered .  These trees were a long-time coming and we've been planning, talking and thinking about them for almost a year.  Today, the trees went in!  Here's the guys digging the holes and placing the trees in the holes to check for placement and spacing.  We ended up going with six feet of spread between each one and 30" away from the fence. You can tell from the photo above that they are going into a low spot and that our neighbor's to the north truck and garage are pretty visible (right now) from the top of our property. Here's three of the eight placed in their holes.  Once we were all happy with the placement, the burlap and rope were removed (well...the bottom of the burlap was left on because our landscaper prefers to keep the rootball intact, but the top of the burlap was cut off and all the rope was removed) and these trees were stuck ba