Why I Oughta...

I was reading this post about what Margaret Roach from A Way To Garden includes in her September gardening chores each year and I was struck by one item:  she takes an inventory of late-blooming perennials as part of her critical look at the garden .  That made me pause.  And think about my garden.  And...what's in bloom?  The answer:  nothing. We're just BARELY holding on in lots of places.  But, not blooming.   Her post talks about thalictrums among others - that (now) have my interest.  One that wasn't mentioned was something that I, frankly, was unaware of until this past weekend.  I was also at Northwind Perennial Farm up in Wisconsin recently and came across this pink flowering perennial named Pink Turtlehead - Chelone lyonii 'Hot Lips' that I *SHOULD* have bought when we were there.  Alas, I passed on them because I didn't know where to put them in our garden.  This is a late-blooming perennial that has the a...

I have an idea for a garden-related project that has been knocking around my head for a number of years.  Well...there are tons of those kind of projects, frankly.  But, for this post, I'm talking about one of them specifically.  This one...involves trees.  And...I haven't moved on it - for a variety of reasons including shifting priorities, lack of need, the right nursery stock and the opportunity.   It starts with this post about Hollywood Junipers in 2018 where I posted a photo of a tree in a wooden box for a container .  And, was likely rekindled during one of my trips to Tokyo where I saw all sorts of container'd conifers.  Like this one from House of Bonsai below: Via House of Bonsai . This is not my photo. And, even more recently, I came across a couple of striking conifer trees by the bus stops down at Disney Springs.  They were relatively new (newly planted) and still had their tags on them. Here's a shot of them below: And, below, ...

Back on Earth Day this Spring, the kids and I went over to Benet Academy and picked up a free native tree seedling from their Environmental Club.  The tree was very small - a little trunk - and a lot of roots.  It was a Shagbark Hickory and I planted it in the backyard .  I then, promptly, forgot about the tree.  I figured it was dead.  Or never alive.  There were a couple of buds on the tree seedling, but I wasn't positive it had any life in it to begin with when I planted it in May. The tree has done nothing.  The buds didn't open.  The tree didn't leaf out at all.  Here is a look at the tree in the photo below: The photo isn't great because it is hard to get my phone to focus on the tiny, thin trunk.  Here's an annotated photo (below) with a red line showing the trunk and a few branches up top.  Again...no leaves at all on this tree. It is dead, right?  At least, that's what I assumed.  But, when I did the whole 'finger...

A few days ago, I posted (once again) about the 'in between two driveways' part of our yard and talked about how the hot, Summer sun beats down part of the area so much so that I've had the grass go dormant every year.  In that post, I talked about taking on just a PART of the area - down by the sidewalk - which is the worst-hit portion of the turf each year.  My thinking was to convert this section to a bed and plant it with something a bit more drought-tolerant.    My longer-term thinking is to convert much of this section 'in between two driveways' to a long, linear bed with just a little bit of turf .  But, that's a big project requiring quite a bit of turf removal AND a lot of planting.   That means I'm going to start with a smaller section right now - and I started to carve out the bed last night.  Just to get the contours of the area that I want to transform, I removed the edge and will follow with removing the (now dormant) turf in the c...

We have a pair of hydrangeas that are what I'd consider somewhat exotic.  I say that because they're not something you'd come across at your normal Big Box nursery - like Limelights or what-have-you.  These were given to us by Nat's Mom as an anniversary gift back in 2017 - our first late Summer/early Fall in our house.  The two of them are a Tuff Stuff Mountain Hydrangea .  And an Everlasting Revolution Hydrangea .  They were both planted in 2017.  And I've posted about them over the years - where they've grown a bit, have survived, but NEVER produced any flowers.  I recently transplanted the smaller one - Everlasting Revolution - to be closer to the front of the bed due to its small size. Tuff Stuff Mountain Hydrangea - Has never flowered.  Always a bit bigger than the Revolution. Planted October 2017 June 2018 - first Summer .  Appeared to grow on both new and old wood. August 2018 - survived the first heat wave during the first Summer. S...

I somehow (somehow!) have really failed to post about my visit(s) - yes...multiple visits this year - to Northwind Perennial Farm in Wisconsin.  Home nursery to Roy Diblik - who I've posted about before here on the blog.  I have a tag up for the place, but when I was taking about some hostas this past week, I mentioned that I planted some Japanese Forest Grasses - Hakonechloa Macra Hakone Grass - and realized I never got around to posting some photos of those visits.   Well, today, I correct that miss. Starting with a photo of a display of something people call Scottish Lovage - but is exclusive to Northwind in Wisconsin.  That photo is below - showing off a couple dozen 1# containers of Ligusticum scoticum.   The sign reads:  "Compact, upright, clump-forming perennial.  Glossy leaves with umbels of tiny, white flowers.  Beautiful seed heads." The second sign provides the pedigree:  "This plant is highly regarded at the Chicago Art Ins...

I was walking around the front beds and - once again - I'm struck by how I've had not a lot of luck with anything I've planted underneath our large Norway Maple tree that sits right outside of our front porch.  This large tree is in decline - likely due to the construction we had when we built our house in 2016 and 2017.  I've tried to attack *that* problem by having the arborists from Davey apply a growth regulator and a liquid fertilizer last year.  And, I'm hoping that the tree is on a path towards survival.  They'll come back this year to apply a second year of fertilizer - that I'm pretty sure (based on these photos) is working .   This year though, I lost a mature hydrangea - a Vanilla Strawberry (one of four out front) and my Lime Light Hydrangeas suffered some this year - and dropped a lot of their leaves in the middle of the Summer .  Here, below, is a top-down photo showing the dead hydrangea (very bottom, middle) and the proximity to the Nor...