Why I Oughta...

 ChatGPT:  sure thing.  How's this? I mean...come on. So let us celebrate this grand invention, The Carousel of Progress and its intention. Here, here.   

This is the second winter for this little, evergreen shrub.  Planted in the Fall of 2021 , it has just hung out here, under the Oak Tree (tree swing tree) in the bed on the north side of the property.  Green Mountain is properly named: Buxus sempervirens 'Green Mountain'. And, based on this post where I tried to get smart on variety vs. cultivar vs. sport terminology , the single quotation marks are - what I thought the real tell was.  But, I'm not totally sure?   Single quotes = cultivar, right?  But, I think the second word is NOT supposed to be capitalized? Hinsdale Nursery calls it a cultivar .  So, let's go with that.   Green Mountain is a Boxwood cultivar. And, this cultivar is pyramidal - which was why I was drawn to it and planted it as a single evergreen shrub in the bed.   It hasn't grown too terribly much in the past growing season, but it is still here.   But, calling it an evergreen is a misnomer, right?  Look at that photo.  It is orange, isn't it

Posting this photo in the garden diary as 'something to watch' come Spring:  the boxwoods that we have planted out front are currently weighed down by some heavy snow.  I've cleaned them off in other years and one of them suffered some die back in an early year we were living here, but this year, I'm just going to leave them be.  I'll let this snow melt off and then we'll see if there is any serious splaying that occurred and any long-term damage to the shrub.   These Boxwoods have NOT thrived, but I'm fairly confident that their lack of really taking off is related to the Norway Maple that I took down last Fall.  With less shade and the root system not having to compete with the mat of Maple roots, I'm hoping they will hit the gas pedal this season.  This area is VERY MUCH my #1 priority for the year , so the outcome of these boxwoods will factor into what I decide to plant here and/or move around.  

Thanks to John Carruthers at Nachos and Lager  (and Crust Fund Pizza ), I've made some progress on my thin crust Tavern pizza the past few weeks.  I call it "Chicago Thin", but it seems that "Chicago Tavern-Cut" has been the most widely-adopted in the pizza-making regions online.  I've been playing around with this on-and-off for about a year.  That includes cold curing.  And room-temperature curing.  The post that featured John and his recipe on Wordloaf was really good as it provided me with a few tweaks and some additional details.  It was also scaled down for two dough balls. I've settled into making a batch of dough for 2 14"(ish) tavern pizzas that first ferments in bulk in the fridge, then the day prior to baking, I ball and stick back in the fridge.  The morning of my bake: I roll out and cure the dough in between pieces of parchment paper.   They dried out and started to get a little-bit brittle along the edges this time, but I'm not c

We wandered around for a bit in the China/Japan section of the Morton Arboretum this weekend and while much of the plant-life is in dormancy, one of the standouts was a couple of Larch trees that were in full bud-mode.  There were a few different Larch trees - Larix X - that are in a stand together.  This section is close to Route 53, so without foliage on the trees, you get a little bit of road noise, making this part of the Arboretum a little less 'remote-feeling'.  Here's a couple of not-so-good photos of the tree buds: North Dakota State has a .pdf up about the Siberian Larch here . They point out this tree is hardy down to Zone 2 - which...I think the name "Siberian" implies, right?  Zone 2 is negative fifty degrees.  The Morton Aboretum folks won't have to worry about this one not surviving one of our Winters.  That has some appeal. I've been thinking of Larch trees for a number of years and covered a few of them here including a Japanese columnar La

The Orange Big Box story has their Spring bulbs already in stock in their greenhouse.  That means, Peonies and Dahlias and Elephant Ears and Gladiolas are packed in sets and ready to go home.  Of course, I couldn't help to go over and see what they had on hand and came across this six-pack of orange Tiger Lily bulbs for $9.98. Tiger Lilies are both familiar and foreign to me.  I feel like I know them, but the reality is....I don't really.  I went online to find a few listings for bulbs and learned a bit - like... these are 'downward-facing' and good for cut-flowers .   But, one of the things that I wasn't sure of is how these are treated:  as annuals (like a Dahlia tuber that is left in the ground) or as a perennial (like an Allium bulb)?  Based on this listing from Longfield Gardens, it seems they're 'hardy down to Zone 4' , which leads me to believe they can be left in the ground and come back year-after-year like an Allium bulb?  The label claims: &qu

This past week, there was a bunch of online/tech chatter about a new (just emerged from stealth mode) hardware + services startup called Mill.   It is from the founder of Nest, who's thermostat changed that entire product category, so the history of success instantly gives this new thing - a composting bin + a service to take your food waste - some credibility.  Mill is a super-fancy kitchen composter that basically cooks your food waste to ensure the bin doesn't start stinking.   #13 on this past year's list was to do more with composting - including under the sink kitchen food waste .  I have the bin, I just stopped filling it in not for any particular reason. The Mill news was enough to nudge me back into the kitchen scrape food waste game.  It didn't take long to fill the little bin with vegetable scraps, egg shells, coffee grinds and house plant foliage.   I used a compostable bag to line the bin, but it was *so* compostable that it had already started to break do