Why I Oughta...

This was a bottle of beer that is in between a normal 16 ounce beer and a bomber bottle.  Had it up in the lounge at the Nagoya Marriott.  Not very memorable, but documenting it here in the beer diary amongst the crafts and other macrobrews. 

Yesterday, I posted a hopeful photo of the first peony that I planted in the backyard that has come back for the second season.  Today, you're seeing another peony - one that we planted from my Sister-in-Law's yard before they built their new house.  Here's the post showing the harvest I pulled out of her yard that included irises, a grass or two, some hostas and what at the time I was pretty sure was a peony plant.  If you look at the date on that post, you'll notice that it is right in the middle of the Summer.  Not an ideal time to transplant anything.  But, we didn't have a choice, so late June transplanting was what we were dealing with in this situation.  Most of the plants didn't show much life.  They didn't show total death for the most part, but I wasn't that hopeful that much of anything was going to come back.  The only plant that seemed to flourish and grow post transplanting from her yard was this happy fern that I put in the

Last May, I planted the first peony tuber in our backyard after having quite a few varieties in our old backyard in Elmhurst.  This first plant was a Sarah Bernhardt variety and is supposed to have big, beautiful pink blooms.  Here's the post showing how I planted it in May of 2018 .   It seemed to establish itself in the Spring because in June of last Summer it showed some signs of life with little purple shoots coming up for the first time .   But, that's about all the 'action' we saw out of this plant during the Summer.  But, I'm thinking that it was busy establishing itself under the mulch because if you peek at the photo at the top of this post, you'll see that we now have a strong leader popping up this Spring.   This is still an immature peony and I'm hoping that we get one flower out of it this year, but we might not get any.  If you want to see what a very mature (7 year established) peony plant looks like at this time of year, have a lo

Last week, I posted photos of the new Gold Cone Junipers that I bought at Menards .  I'll get around to posting some photos once I get them into the ground in the coming days.  But, that post talked about the need to add some spiral wire around the trees to ensure that they can take the snowload and stop them from splaying during the Winter.  In that post , I mentioned that I needed to add to the 'addendum' that lengthens my 2019 garden To-Do List that included wiring up these Junipers. That got me wondering what else would be on my addendum list. Let's get started and I'm guessing I'll revisit this list to add more items over the Spring and Summer. Addendum To-Do List for 2019 Gardening Season.   Original List here .   1.  Relocate some of the Fall bulbs including these Tulips along the South Fence line in the backyard .   If I move these 'forward', I can extend that bed and add something taller in the back. 2.  After I plant the tree Gold C

Number Eight on my 2019 To-Do List is to add some conifers to our yard this season and I'm getting an early start on checking the box.  I picked up three of these Gold Cone Junipers that are small sized at Menards this past weekend.  I put one of them in the cast iron pot outside of our garage just to fill the space, but I intend to put them in the ground in the backyard as soon as the soil temperature increases later this month. The tag below shows these in their Spring, golden spendor.  The back lists the size - which is the big reason I'm drawn to these:  they will get about five feet tall, but stay 1-2' wide.  Columnar.    Or something akin to an 'exclamation point' in the garden. The big question in my mind is:  are these trees? Turns out the answer is 'no'.  Can't count them as trees.  They are technically "evergreen coniferous bush".  Can't count them in the number of trees that we've planted - technically.  But should

We had the 'front half' of our backyard sodded when we built our house, but left the back half of the backyard completely native.  All the weeds and grass and what have you growing back there.  The bulk of my focus out back has been on the landscaping and mostly left the lawn/turf on autopilot.  I had our Automower running back there, so it kept the lawn pretty low and I don't think I really noticed the HUGE amounts of Wild Onions that were growing in the grass.    If you read my post from a few days ago , you'll know that I recently put down a pre-emergent grassy weed and crabgrass preventer.  That product does NOTHING for Wild Onions.  Well...I suppose that I should start at the beginning of this year.  As our grass was coming back and starting to green-up, I noticed some pockets of dark green, spikey grass.  Or so I thought.  As I went outside, I started to realize that this wasn't grass.  But something else.   I didn't actually really know what this st

Back in December, I posted about an experiment that I was conducting with the application of Wilt-Pruf to one of our Rhododendrons that are located on either side of our back stoop.  Wilt-Pruf is an anti-transpirant that I bought to use on our fresh-cut Christmas Trees, but I also learned can be applied to any evergreen in an attempt to help it get through difficult Winters.  Wilt-Pruf is a natural product made of pine oil and creates a clear, almost flexible coating on the leaves and needles.   I sprayed it on just one of the Rhododendrons and figured it would be useful to compare the results.   The photo you see at the top is shows both of them on top/bottom.  The plant on the top is the one that had Wilt-Pruf applied.  The plant on the bottom was left bare.   The results?  Hard for me to say if it did anything, frankly.  I think the one that was treated has less spotting on the leaves, but maybe that's just random?   Thus, I'd say the experiment is incon