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

A few days ago, I posted a photo of a vintage University of Illinois Fighting Illini football 1984 Rose Bowl felt pennant and remarked that it was from my childhood.  It was (somehow??) saved by my mother who packed it away with a bunch of other things from my life.  When my folks moved out of their house in Frankfort - and we moved into our home in Downers Grove - they gave me a bunch of boxes and tubs loaded with personal effects.  Along with a collection of greeting cards from my First Communion and sports trophies, these pennants were stuck into the boxes.  There are a whole bunch of them that I'll get to, but today's post is about this epic, vintage Walt Disney World Epcot Center spacesuit felt pennant.  It features Mickey, Donald and Goofy all in their 'Rainbow Brite' costumes  and this one, too, I remember from my childhood.  I'll have to ask my mom if she has any memories of when we got this, but it seems that this *has* to be from the 1980's, ri

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

The very first tips of some of our Spring bulbs have started to poke through the mulch.  This is a tulip bulb in our front beds that are covered with cocoa bean hull mulch.  Which...now that I'm looking at this photo - sure looks pretty great.  The cocoa bean mulch is a rich, dark brown and composed of small flakes that are both breaking down, but not disappearing.  Compare the color to the few pieces of bark/wood that are in the bed and you can see how the color is much deeper in the cocoa bean mulch. These bulbs are the same ones that I documented last Spring - but later in March . One of the biggest problems that I have this time of year in this area is keeping these from getting stepped on.  This bed is in between our house and the neighbors whom the girls spend time with.  It is easy to trample these tips if they're not careful.  These are the red and orange tulips that I told myself I needed to augment with yellow .  But...I didn't end up doing it last year.

It is sure feeling like Spring around these parts.  But, this columnar Oak tree that I came across on a walk sure isn't in the mood to bud out.  It is still clinging to it's Fall leaves.  This is a parkway tree, so it was planted by the forestry or arborist division of the Village of Downers Grove public works department as part of their parkway tree program.  I mentioned/covered the species that they have available in this post about our own parkway tree at the very end of 2019 and sure enough...one of the Spring-planted trees are Oaks.  They list them as (various species) in their handout . Might be a Columnar English Oak?  This Monrovia listing shows it down to Zone 5 .  This is a lovely parkway tree and the marcescence adds some drama to the curbside that's for sure.  I've covered the concept of marcescence (trees like this one retaining leaves through all of/part of Winter) on the blog.  And we see it with our own Oak trees and the row of Frans Fontaine H

Via Little Caesars corporate site here .  This is not my photo.  I saw this photo (above) in this video from Company Man on YouTube ( He's a good follow there . Interesting brand histories and some speculation/rationale for why they succeed/fail.  That's what I'm pretty sure is the first franchise of Little Caesar's in Warren Michigan.  On the Little Caesars corporate site , they list 1962 as the year of the first franchise and include this photo. At first glance, I love just everything about this photo.  The name (Little Caesar's Pizza Treat), the sign (the fonts, the shape, the l-shaped light bulb row down the side and across the bottom).  Then, inside the place, those light fixtures hanging from the ceiling.  The fact that they have a lamp in there.  The fact that the store is split up 50/50 front-to-back so from the outside you get a peek into the kitchen.  The entirely glass front of the store.  The employees wearing white with paper hats.  And that car

I was in the KotBT's room recently and saw that Nat had a stack of vintage felt pennants on his dresser that she was dealing with/sorting in an attempt to put some up on the walls of his room.  They ALL were pretty neat, but there are a couple from the collection that I think are worth documenting on this here blog. The first one is this one you see above - Fighting Illini Football Rose Bowl 1984.  This pennant is one of MINE - from when I was a kid.  I remember it well.  It came - along with a whole host of boxes from my childhood - from my parents when they moved out of my childhood home.  It was one of a few pennants that they (somehow??) saved. This one is of particular interest to me - and I love that it is going in our boy's room.  I had a sister that was a number of years older than me.  And one of my earliest memories is of visiting her down at the Six Pack in Champaign during her freshman year.  I would have been four or five years old when she was there.  And thi