Why I Oughta...

With Fall here and Winter coming, that usually means that I do *even more* pizza making than I do during the Summer.  The arrival of our Ooni earlier this year changed Summer pizza-making, but I've also been making a little bit of progress on my bar pies.  Here's a shot post-oven/pre-cut of fennel sausage across the whole thing and hot giardiniera on half.  Olive-free giardiniera, of course.    I was talking to Equation Boy/Man about this particular bar pie recently and he mentioned that (for some reason he can't quite explain) the little "orange spots of carrots peeking through make his mouth water".  Dare you to look at this and not have the same reaction.   Last time I posted about my bar pies was in August - when I showed a cross-section and a little bit of the undercarriage .  Back then, I was using a cheddar for the frico edge, but I've moved away from that (for now).  Feels like a Winter thing to bring back at Dorianell's , doesn't it?   I start

Last Fall, I bought a plant that wasn't known to me, but I liked the traits that the sign at the Morton Arboretum Fall Plant Sale spoke of, so I ended up buying one and bringing it home.  That plant ended up being a Cimicifuga 'Chocoholic' - also know as Black Snakeroot .  What did I like about it?  Shade-loving, fall flowering, purple native(ish) plant.   What's not to like, right?   When I brought it home last year, it was in bloom.  This week, it is in bloom again this year.  Mid-October for these white blooms you see in the photo below: I posted a photo of the first fronds (is that what these are??) emerging in early Spring this year - their first Spring.   This particular plant showed a little bit of drought stress this year with some of the foliage curling in August and September.  The Proven Winners listing mentions giving it constant water through the Summer and taking 'a few years to reach maturity' , so I'll continue to babysit it in 2022. I'm

I collected a couple handfuls of Oak tree acorns (pretty sure they are from a Red Oak) as a project to see if I could work into seedlings next Spring.  There's a lot of info out there about how to plant Oak trees from acorns, but this YouTube video was the most helpful for me .  It isn't super fast-moving, but if you have the time, it is a nice overview.  The steps of growing your own trees start with collecting acorns.  From there, you have to test them for viability - using the 'float test'.   After cleaning them up (removing their tops), you dump them in a bucket of water.  The ones that float aren't viable.  The ones that sink...usually ARE viable.  (the video recommends doing a couple of float tests to be sure...) So, after collecting these acorns, I dumped them into a bucket.  And...not ONE of them appears to be viable.  All floaters. I noticed that most of them have these little in holes on the sides of the acorn.  See the photo below: Well...I learned someth

Yesterday, I shared a couple of photos of the very young Japanese White Pine tree that has a ton of brown and orange needles .  The tree is either in severe decline and will be dead soon.  Or, it is going through a normal process of needle drop to get ready for some new Spring growth.  I have no idea.  I *do* know that the tree was stressed before I planted it and the cones were already present at the top - indicating that (I think) the tree was concerned for its own wellbeing, so it threw out a good crop of cones based on the size of the tree.  In that post, I mentioned that the small (and adjacent) Weeping White Spruce appears to have stabilized after suffering some heavy drought damage this Summer.  It seems like the needle loss has stopped and the remaining sections are green and well-connected.  I shared a mid-Summer update on this tree where you can see the needle loss, but when you compare the photos from September to now , it is clear that even more needles were dropped in the

Things aren't looking good for the Pinus Parviflora 'Glauca Nana' - the dwarf Japanese White Pine tree that I picked up at Home Depot in mid-Summer after it had lingered in the lot for quite some time .  I was really excited about the tree and hopeful that it would put down some roots and establish itself this Summer.  But, unfortunately, it seems that it is fading.  And fast.  Here's what it looks like right now - in the photo below.  It is brown, orange and certainly NOT green. But, when I inspect the tree closer, I see tips that are *still* green with small needles.  Like the section you see below: And, using the old 'tree health test' of scraping away some bark with a fingernail to see if the limbs are green underneath reveals (at least *some*) sign(s) of life.  See below for a little spec of green that I revealed under the bark: Could this be normal behavior?  I'm pretty SURE it is not normal and this tree is in decline and will not be green come Spring

When I posted last week about the replacement (tiny) Ginko tree that I planted 'ib2dw', I mentioned that the Ginko wasn't the last tree for the year.  There are a few more coming this week - starting with my very first Dogwood tree.  When I bought the small Chinkapin Oak tree from the Conservation Foundation in late September , I also bought another small native tree:  A Cornus alternifolia (Pagoda Dogwood).    Below, you can see the tag for the tree. This dogwood is different than the ones I've seen in the big box nurseries where I typically see Cornus kousa and Cornus florida.  You can read up about those various cultivars around the Web - but the main takeaway is that florida is the standard that has been around for a while, but kousa is a new(er) sport that is more disease resistant.   The dogwood tree that we selected is known as the Pagoda Dogwood.  Morton Arboretum has a tree listing up here for the Pagoda Dogwood - Cornus alternifolia . They describe it an '

Yesterday, I shared a look at one of the Moneywort plants that I transplanted from a container to our side yard.  It has thrived in deep shade. And....Last week, I posted (again) about dividing and transplanting some Karl Foerster Feather Reed Grasses in our front beds (under our Norway Maple) and talked about how one of my 2021 to-do list goals was to transplant some foster plants AND to divide up some of my existing perennials.  I've created 12 'free grasses' by dividing up what I have on hand and in *that* post, I mentioned that I also divided a purple Heuchera earlier this year - but failed to post about it. The last time I checked in on this particular plant was last August when it had survived a full year after being transplanted the previous Fall.  But, earlier this year - right around early Spring - I dug up and divided this plant into three separate plants and put them back into the same bed on the northside of the garage.   You can see that bed below with the