Why I Oughta...

Over the weekend, I started to plant the first few pieces of our backyard landscape plan - starting with the rear foundation plantings.  I posted the landscape plan for this area back in October of last year that shows a series of hostas, grasses and boxwoods.  The central area - right underneath our bird feeders - called for five staggered grasses.  Karl Foerster Reed Grasses to be precise.  So, when I came across them at Home Depot, I grabbed up six of them.   Six.  Yeah...because I didn't have the plan in front of me and I thought it called for six.  Turns out, the plan calls for five of them here, but five more in a different spot.   Thus, I ended up planting just one of that other set of five, but will get the other four later this Spring.  The photo you see above shows where I put them in the bed.  That green wire laying around is for our Automower.  His dock is right in front of this bed and that is the excess boundary wire and the lead wire that terminate at the doc

Look at this lovely little discovery that I found in our rear foundation landscape beds:  hostas are emerging from the mulch.  And these are the questionable ones that I dug out of the yard down the block right before they tore down the house .  It appears that all three of the clumps that I put down have emerged in various quantities.  I ended up planting them where they were called out in the landscape plan - along the west and southwest corners of the house - as outlined here in a post .    The plan called for 4 Hadspen Hostas so with the planting of these we've made some serious progress towards getting this bed in a spot that reflects the design plan.  Adding the fountain grasses below the bird feeders is the other/next step to fulfilling the vision and I'm hoping to get those in this week ahead of getting our mulch installed. 

My love of shade gardening is well documented here on the blog.  After all, it is what I grew up with and what my Mom was doing down on Overlook Court East.  We had a wooded lot and she cultivated - as best she could - shade gardens featuring hostas mostly.  At our new spot in Downers Grove, we too, have plenty of shade.  We were blessed with a few volunteer ferns that came with our lot and I've begun to incorporate hostas into the mix that I both have bought ( this year ) and scavenged from a tear down ( last fall ). In addition to my love of hostas, I've posted quite a bit about one of my other favorites:  ferns.  We've fostered some ferns in Naperville (which I need to dig out!), planted some ferns at Equation Boy/Man's and Vic's house before we moved out , transplanted some survivor/volunteers in our #newoldbackyard , confirmed with the University of Illinois Extension Office that we do, indeed, have Ostrich ferns , and documented them coming up over the

More than 20 years ago. But still 30 years after Bob Dylan started with the song.  Want a good version?  Here's a good one.  Give it a listen.  Then go open up another tab and do something else.  Here's a particularly good part : Ophelia, she's 'neath the window for her I feel so afraid On her twenty-second birthday she already is an old maid To her, death is quite romantic she wears an iron vest Her profession's her religion, her sin is her lifelessness And though her eyes are fixed upon Noah's great rainbow She spends her time peeking into Desolation Row

Last week, I picked up these two different ferns from Menards because of two reasons: 1.  I love ferns. 2.  They were on sale at just $2 a piece. So, both the Japanese Painted fern and the Autumn Fern came home with us and they're going here online in my [ Garden Diary ] so I can look back over the years. I planted a Japanese Painted fern back in 2012 in our old house in Elmhurst and documented it here in 2014 when it came back.    It never got all that large, but it did re-emerge after the winter - as long as I didn't smother it with mulch - so I figured I'd give it another go. The other one - the Autumn Fern - is new to me.  I've had other ones called "Autumn Brilliance" before , but don't think this one in particular.  They totally tolerate shade and basically require it, so I was looking for a spot that would guarantee that and ended up putting them in the little bed on the north side of the screened porch.  There's about 2'

We were at Hollywood Studios recently and it was very busy.  Very busy. That's fine with us because we don't spend all day in the parks, but it also means that the operations at the Parks pull out some of their lesser-used entertainment options.  In Hollywood Studios, that mean that we saw some of the "Citizens of Hollywood" .  On my way to the bathroom down by Tower of Terror, I saw this guy standing on the curb reading the newspaper (The Hollywood Star, btw).   Turns out, it was Jack Diamond - the talent agent .   He's not on Main Street USA, but I'm still counting him as one of the characters we've come across.  Here's the rest of the list from WDW: Honorable Christopher George Weaver , Mayor of Main Street USA Scoop Sanderson , Main Street Gazette Reporter, Town Councilman and Pin-thusiast Chief Smokey Miller , Chief of the Main Street Volunteer Fire Department, Mayor George Weaver's “right-hand man” Ms. Hildegard Olivia Hardin

Most mornings, I catch the train out of the Fairview Station on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Metra line.  Bordering the south passenger platform, past the station is a Pepperidge Farm factory.  And it totally gives off a "Stranger Things" vibe to me.   Every morning when I walk past it - and even more on mornings when it is snowing a little bit - I get this very specific Hawkins National Laboratory feeling as I see the trucks moving to/from near the docks.   Now, making Goldfish crackers isn't going to open a hole to the upside down.  But it doesn't keep me from smiling about it each morning I head there. You might be wondering...why is there a Pepperidge Farm factory there in the first place?  Well...it is a place that provides a diverse employee base.  And has been there for 65 years .  It was selected due to our proximity to Chicago, but there also is this cute little story about how the founder just liked the Village's name: While the