Why I Oughta...

No one brings out a bigger smile in me than my wife of (almost!) five years.  One of our friends just shared this photo from her wedding earlier this summer.  I may not be the best dancer, but I sure do have a lot of fun dancing with this amazing woman! If I had to guess, this was to Hall and Oates "You Make My Dreams Come True" which the DJ happily played for all of us.  (If you are reading this in your email and can't see the video below, do yourself a favor and click here to watch the video here back on the site. )

The folks over at Illinois Homeowners Unite have posted a warning to a few communities about the coming of Pulte Homes to their towns. Elmhurst tops their list.  A quick look on Google shows that Pulte is *already* here in Elmhurst with a development that is south of Butterfield, north of I-88 that contains a choice of just three models .  They're calling it their "Premier Collection". The reason I bring this up is because we've started to hear some rumors about the redevelopment of the old Elmhurst Hospital property and one of the names of builders that keeps coming up is Pulte Homes. Why does it matter?  W ell...some info out there points to some negatives with Pulte . As the economy has modestly improved we have seen an incremental rise in home values, yet nothing compared to the skyrocketing revenues of PulteGroup, which continues to produce homes using cheap labor to enhance its bottom line while showing little consideration for current homeowners, fut

Back in late May, I picked up this Spiked Gayfeather from the Elmhurst Garden Club annual plant sale . It was a little thing with just a few inches tall of greenery.  I put it in the backyard in the beds underneath our family room.  It (apparently) likes it there.  Four flowered shoots have grown to be three+ feet tall and the flowers are so heavy that they're weighting down the stems. Nat doesn't love the placement, but I am not sure I should move it.  She wants it to be moved to a different area where it can serve as the background behind some lower plantings.  I don't disagree with that idea, but I'm hesitant to move something that so clearly is happy and healthy.   They're known to divide after some time, so maybe early next Spring when they're just popping up, I'll dig up the roots of some of them and move them around.

We're starting to get a lot of little green gems.  Still a week or two away from harvesting time, but they're looking nice and not getting any splits from uneven/over-watering.

Earlier this summer, I picked up a tomatillo plant on a whim.  I stuck it in the ground and pretty much forgot about it.  At some point, I read that you actually needed two of them for pollination ( source here ), so I went back looking for another one, but came up empty. I let the plant grow, but figured it was a lost cause.    I went back into the garden this morning to poke around and see what was happening and look at this beauty that is growing.  There are a few of them starting to take shape, so either they're going to be some bizarre tomatillo/tomato hybrid, you don't actually *need* two of them, or something else weird happened totally.

We walked to Church this weekend down York Street and saw the exterior construction that was going on in the old Smoothie Factory space.  You'll remember the Smoothie Factory closed back in April after a number of years in the location. Really glad to see an entrepreneur give it a go in our City Centre.  And I'm even more pleased that it isn't a nail salon or "Cash for Gold" franchise location.  Also glad to see the landlord make the necessary investment in the building. The exterior work on the building looks to be enhancing the facade - which is really nice.  Based on the story on the Elmhurst Patch , it looks like we're getting something called the Fulla Bologna Old World Delicatessent.   They have a site up , but don't give much detail on what they're offering. I'm hoping that they'll do a great job on sandwiches and IMPORTANTLY....have a killer giardiniera to go along with them.   As for the name, a commenter on the Patch pointe

Word came this week that the City of Elmhurst City Council did something that I have never witnessed a governmental body do before: Aftering giving something more thought, they unanimously adopted a “minority report” version of a recommendation coming out of a committee over the initial “majority” view of the situation. The details of what exactly happened can be found here on the Elmhurst Patch. The interesting part isn’t that a marketing agency only received a five month contract and not a twelve month contract. That’s not the big takeaway here. The important part is that Alderman Dannee Polomsky - my Alderman and neighbor - used this time to make a larger point about the City of Elmhurst taking some time to be deliberate and evaluate ALL of the marketing initiatives as a collective whole and work to optimize them.   For instance...The City of Elmhurst has a role (Part-time) on staff for something called "Visitor and Tourism" while at the same time, Finzall main