Why I Oughta...

Out in the backyard, we have what I'd call a real work-in-progress when it comes to the lawn.  Well...a work-in-progress when it comes to everything back there including the landscaping and trees and mulch and what-have-you.  But this post is about the lawn in particular.  The past two seasons, I've done what I'd call the minimum in terms of working the lawn.  I put down a synthetic crabgrass preventer with early feed, a weed and feed and a Summer feed.  I also put down a synthetic grub treatment and last season put down an organic insect killer that was supposed to treat for ticks and ants and other things.  But, I mostly left the weeding to chance.  When we moved in, we sodded about the first 100' of grass, then seeded the next 50 or so feet and left the balance to just be how it was.  There were plenty of weeds, crabgrass and clover back there.  The problem with weeds in the lawn is that they don't just stay in place.  They colonize!  They grow.  They move a

Last year, I came to the conclusion that due to the size of our property, having a hose that is connected to our main spigot against the house was basically unusable.  The hose would have to be 200+ feet long and would stretch all over the place.  What else?  It would inevitably end up being strewn across the lawn and get nicked up by our Automower.  My solution was this yard hydrant.  I bought this beige color one that has a hose holder attached and simply stuck it in the ground.  It has its own spigot and allows me to turn the water on/off at this point. I ran a rubber hose from the house out about 100 or so feet in the mulch beds.  I buried it just a few inches underground and connected it to the yard hydrant.  Then I have this existing vinyl 100' hose that I can use to run out to the various beds. This eliminated half of the problem of having hose laying around.  But, it still means that I have 100 feet of hose (instead of 200 feet!) that ends up laying around. Posti

The two varieties of orange Dahlias that I posted about a few days ago aren't the only flower that we planted recently.  The Dahlias aren't bulbs, technically.  They're tubers.  The flowers (or...hopefully soon-to-be flowers) here in this photo are 30 Gladiolus.  Turns out, Gladiolus aren't bulbs, either.  They're technically corms.  What the heck is a corm?  I had no idea, but I found this post that walks you through bulbs vs. corms vs. tubers .  These are the first corms that we've planted and the first time I've planted gladiolus.  I don't know why, but they've never been something that I've been drawn to over the years despite the fact that growing up I attend the Glad-Peach Festival in Coloma every year.  There were always tons of gladiolus.  But not that many peaches.  The Bird helped me plant there and I put them all in the bed between the last and the second to last Hornbeam on the North fenceline.  I decided to not plant them in

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