Why I Oughta...

Back in the beginning of May, I posted a few photos of a piece of nursery stock from Home Depot that was a Cedar tree and talked about how I was beginning to go down the bonsai journey .  At the time, I knew that I was better off pulling some cheap ($10) pieces off the shelf from Home Depot, work them a bit and see what happens versus say...buying an *already* trained and pruned bonsai tree.   Then, just last week, I posted an update on how I think I might have GONE TOO FAR with my first tree .   I pruned the heck out of it.  And..I worked the roots.  Doing both at the same time is not a good idea, but I have to say...live and learn.  Right?  That Cedar tree is basically done for the season.  I've put it in a bonsai pot and now I am just keeping an eye on it with water - which...the pot that I put it in has a tray below it - and that meant that the water ran through the pot, but was sticking around underneath it...thus keeping the feet of the plant wet for a few days.  Once I d

The last time I posted a #TBT photo of my youth soccer team it was the core group of guys that I played with for almost ten years .  Today's photo is of the same team, technically.  But it isn't all of the core boys.  There are some guys like Tom, Loran, John, Ted, Matt, Chris and Russ in here, but we supplemented with a few older/different guys from what I can best describe as a 'different soccer dimension'.  They were skilled players, but from a different club scene. This photo is from either my seventh or eighth grade years, so I was 13 or 14 years old and I had the pouty teen thing down, right? We're playing in Ireland in 1991 or 1992 and you can see the sign in the back reads Pike Rovers Football Club .  We were representing the USA in some fashion (not officially), but we were wearing French National jerseys because they were pretty close to what the US Men's National Team were wearing at the time - but the US ones had the colors only on one should

With the soil temperatures finally getting around 60 degrees in our Zone, I was able to get this year's Dahlia Tubers in the ground.  I planted them here - in the photo - along the south fence line right in front of the Teardown Hydrangea.  The Semi-Cactus ones on the left and the Dinnerplate ones on the right.    Last year, I put a few different types in containers and they did well .  I watered them in and will try to keep an eye on the spot in the next few weeks to hope that we get some growth out of the mulch.

I first came across a Weeping White Spruce tree via Laura @ Garden Answer on Youtube .  I've embedded her video below and have set it to start at 1:03 mark in the video where she talks about how they picked this tree out.  In particular, she talks about how we're not supposed to judge an evergreen by what it looks like as a 'baby tree'.    The Weeping White Spruce is a columnar evergreen and it is a weeping tree.  By now, you guys know I love columnar varieties of trees and are drawn to those because it means that I can pack more trees into the yard as they grow.   The first weeping conifer that I bought was last year was the Weeping Himalayan Cedar Tree that I planted about a year ago .  Earlier this month, I posted my concern for the tree as it had suddenly turned brown, but the good news is that it seems it has recovered and there is new, green growth all over the place .    I also added six ( but just three of them planted so far) Canadian Hemlocks to br

Adding this to the [ garden diary ] here on the blog to remind myself (mostly) that I put down 15 fertilizer tree spikes near our Frans Fontaine European Hornbeam Trees that we put in last year.    I put two on each tree but the most Western one that got just one.  (7 trees x 2 spikes) + (1 tree x 1 spike) = Feed trees for the spring.  I am going to supplement the last tree (and maybe a few others?) with a direct application of Milorganite (or the generic that Menards claims to be selling soon). What made me decide to go with these Jobes Fertilizer Spikes again is that the tree leaf that is featured on the packaging appears to be a Hornbeam leaf (or something like it...) so the product seems fit for purpose, right? I last showed the view from our screened porch BEFORE the Hornbeams went in here , but to mark the fertilizer application, I took a similar photo and am sharing it here below.  The angle is different, but I wanted to show the leafy-ness of these trees prior to the a

A few weeks back, we had a few days of very heavy rain.  It came down in the morning, afternoon and evening.  For like three of four days straight.  The ability to work in the yard was almost zero because of how saturated the ground was in the yard and the beds.  But that rain event also exposed to me a few areas in the far reaches of our yard that I think are worth documenting here in order to be sure that as I begin to address the far back yard that these spots are giving proper consideration. Due to their location and distance for the existing water mitigation tools (Dry well, etc), I am thinking that the only way to really address some of these is through a combination of improving the soil's ability to absorb water (aeration, de-thatching) and through the changing of the grade. First up is this linear puddle that is maybe twenty feet long and sits between a rough (eventual!) bed and the yard from the trampoline to the neighbor gate on the southside.   The second

Of all the various tree-related posts here on the blog, the Dawn Redwood might have the most action in terms of posting.  I first bought our initial Dawn Redwood back in May of 2017 and planted it in our new backyard in Downers Grove.   By October of 2017, I was concerned that the tree was not going to survive .  And I was right.  It didn't come back.   So, I replaced it with a tree from an online nursery and planted it in July .  Not the best time to plant a new, young tree, right?  But, by Fall, it was showing signs of growth and it had seemingly weathered the tough, stressful planting.  Mid-November of last year, the deciduous needles had turned all brown (as they are SUPPOSED TO DO!) ahead of the hard Winter.  Finally, my most recent post on this tree was on April 1st of this year where I shared a photo of some of the buds that had set last Fall about to burst open with new growth .  The issue is that back on our initial Dawn Redwood, we too, had buds that had set, b