Why I Oughta...

Back in January, I mentioned that we had a big, beautiful Northern Flicker visit our feeders but I was unable to get a useable photo of the bird for the blog.  I posted about it anyway .  Welp, fast-forward a month and guess who's back?!  The Northern Flicker.  And why do I know?  The yellow flight feathers are a tell-tale sign.   Also, the size.  Check out this guy in the photo above and how his body is dominating the suet cage in terms of size.  He's much larger than the other woodpeckers who visit our cages and feeders.  Mark it down, dude.  Northern Flicker.  See the yellow in the photo of him taking off below to confirm:

Before we get too far away from the holiday season, I wanted to post this new addition to our pin board:  a Limited Edition 2018 Happy Holidays - Aulani, A Disney Resort & Spa Christmas ornament pin that opens up to reveal a couple of special Aulani friends: Duffy and his lady friend ShellieMay.  You Disney pros know who they are.  But those of you who are confused why Mickey the Mouse isn't in there?  Read this piece about who is the most popular Disney characters in Asia . We've been to Disney Parks in the past around Christmas time and because of that, we usually end up with at least one Christmas-related Disney Pin.  I've covered some of these on the blog before. Here's a photo and post about a Stormtrooper with a candy cane holiday Disney pin .   Here's a Haunted Mansion Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party pin from 2015 .   We also bought two other pins from the same party in 2015 including one with Mickey, Minnie and Pluto and the other 

It appears that I didn't do a proper firewood consumption check-in post in the month of January this year as the last time I posted a photo of the wood racks was late December of 2018 .  Here's a photo that I took a few days ago that shows only the largest rack closest to our family room.  Why?  Because the other two racks (the one outside and the other one in our screened porch) are both empty.  Above, you can see a small pile of Cherry left on top and a small pile of Birch on the bottom.  This won't last long. Compare the quantity in the photo above to where we were last February 8th when we were using the larger, metal, traditional rack .  My assumption is that the cold Winter isn't going to snap into Spring anytime soon, so I've placed an order with Best Firewood to replenish the racks.  Unfortunately, the *good* Cherry as well as the Birch firewood are all sold out for the season.  So, the backfill order was a Face cord that is split between Cherry (the

Back in September of 2017, I posted about a Disneyland Rose plant that Nat's Mom gave us for our anniversary.  In that post, I shared the background on the variety and how it came to be back in 2004.  I ended up planting that first Disneyland Rose plant near the rear foundation outside of our kitchen window and hoped for the best.  It weathered the first Winter and came to bloom for the first time last Summer and I posted about that in June of 2018 . Then, for our Anniversary in 2018, Nat's Mom sent us two more Disneyland Rose plants that I stuck in the side foundation beds on the Southside of our house between our house and our neighbor. So, imagine my delight when we were visiting the Disneyland Resort and we came across a large bed near the gateway entry point along Harbor Drive.  Here's the Google Maps overview that shows the area where this bed is located: This location means that everybody at one of the "good neighbor" hotels/motels that walks to

I've written about the pair of Greenspire Linden trees that we have in our backyard that I espalier'd in the late Summer of 2017, right after we moved in a few times here on the blog - with the most recent being in May of last year where I showed the tree's buds about to burst open to life .  Here's a post from September of 2017 that I showed the espalier system that I used (wires and posts) and why I chose to put them a little bit further away from the fence than one would normally. Those two espalier'd trees are done in what is known as the "cordon" style.  Or, maybe, a "Double Cordon" or "Triple Cordon" because we have (currently) four rows of branches. Cordon is just one of the styles that are popular with the others being Candelabra and something called the "Belgian Fence". Here's a breakdown of some of the most common versions of espalier from "State by State Gardening" below.  Link to the imag

As of this morning, it has gotten down to -22 degrees fahrenheit with wind chills down to -49 degrees fahrenheit.  You can see in the image above that it appears that tomorrow early am is going to be a couple of degrees colder. But, not sure it will break the record of -27 degrees - which happened during my lifetime in January of 1985 .  I don't have any memory of the cold of 1985, but I *do* have vivid memories of the Polar Vortex of 2014  that sat over Elmhurst (and all of Northern Illinois) for two days.  It was cold those days, but not so cold that they shut down the mail.  In fact, Nat spotted our mail carrier out delivering mail and invited him in to warm up.  We had another smaller Polar Vortex in 2015 (I think it was classified as such??) and I posted about how we ended up with just a little bit of cabin fever and went outside to make a quick snow angel for like 4 minutes here on the blog . So...how cold is it today?  The United States Postal Service has suspended m

Why not make the bathroom awesome, right?  That's what, I'm sure the Imagineers said who were putting the final touches on the Disneyland Hotel .  As I've mentioned before, you should - if you can swing it - stay there on your visit to the Disneyland Resort.   Most recently, we failed to take my own advice and stayed at a "Good Neighbor" hotel (c'mon...let's be honest here:  it was a motel). To make-up for our staying outside the 'Disney Bubble' and to kind-of recreate a special character meal we had a few years back, we booked a breakfast at Goofy's Kitchen .  The restaurant is in the convention center building that is right next door to the Fantasy Tower.  Here's a map from the OC Register that shows the Disneyland Hotel footprint . If you wander off to the bathroom that is outside of the restaurant, you enter one that is set up for conventions.  It has a lot of room.  The bathroom itself isn't worth commenting on.  But, the w