Why I Oughta...

Last week in the post about how I had bought my first run of Humic Acid (granular), I mentioned that I was going to test my soil before applying.  Welp, today is that day.  I bought two Soil Savvy Soil Test Kits after watching Ryan Knorr on YouTube talk about how to collect a sample .   There are a variety of ways you can test your soil including a few that you can buy at Menards and mix up on the spot, but this test is priced a bit higher, requires you to send away a sample and the posts some online results for you.  So, why two?  You can probably imagine that I'd want to get a test from my front yard and my back.  But, you'd be wrong.  When we built our house, the entire front yard was a massive mud pit.  And so was the back.  For about the first 100 feet.  And that's where we laid sod.  Based on the soil type in our landscape beds, I'm pretty sure that everywhere there is sod, there's a lot of terrible clay soil.  The front and the back (first 100 feet) were

I mumbled that to myself like 10x a day the past few days. 

Early last Spring, I found a large cast iron urn planter on Craigslist in LaGrange and added it to our front yard landscape .  It is BIG and HEAVY and it hasn't moved since we filled it last year.   Nat has expressed that she doesn't love it in this location, but I haven't moved it yet.  And, the bad news is that I filled it this season already.  This post is to document what this thing looks like in June of 2019. You can see that I've gone ahead and applied the whole thrill/fill/spill thing.  As we get later into the heat of the Summer and Fall, I'll swap these out for something else. 

Another day, another tree that we planted in the yard.  This one, while isn't technically in the "dwarf" category, is another purposely-small tree:  A Hakuro Nishiki Dappled Willow Tree.  Welp....this is actually - according to the tag - a "Deciduous Shrub", but in Tree Form.  So, I'm calling it a tree.  I'm pretty sure that this is a grafted tree, but I can't really tell where it was grafted.  I'll post some closer photos if I can find the graft spot/line in the tree.   But, since this is a tree, this is #35 in terms of planting since we bought the property in 2017.  This is a tree that we had (and I bought it on a whim) back at our old house in Elmhurst.  We planted it on the northside of our backwalk, adjacent to the garage.  It was a stunner.   I loved how it looked.  Nat loved it, too.  It shoots out these beautiful - and almost celebratory - willow limbs that are full of color. Pinks, greens, whites.      I don't have a post

This marks the eighth tree that I've added to our backyard this season - and all eight of them (so far) have been conifers.  This one being a Dwarf Alberta Spruce tree.  The most recent tree that I planted was this Weeping White Spruce tree earlier this month .    Those of you who have kept up with things around here, you may remember that #8 on my to-do list for the season was to plant some conifers .   These eight trees are all small (tiny Hemlocks, especially!), but this is the first "dwarf" tree in the yard.   But, all of them are conifers.  This one was picked out by the Bird for her "Earth Day Tree" this year, but it took us more than a month to get into the ground.    And it is planted right adjacent to last year's tree that she planted - a Chanticleer Pear flowering tree .   So, eight conifer trees.  Plus three conifer shrubs - when we added these Gold Cone Junipers to the other side of the property .  Just yesterday, I showed off the brigh

Look at this Gold Cone Juniper being all showy with it's new gold foliage.  Compare this photo to what this shrub looked like when I bought and planted it in early May of this year.   Remarkable difference in the color.  Also note that the new growth is, indeed, kind of *loose* in terms of opening up the shrub a bit.  What I learned when I first bought these is that they need to be wired or twine'd up ahead of Winter .  Reminder to self:  wire up the Junipers this Fall.

All the way in the back of our lot is a tree that the kids climb from time-to-time.  Back there, underneath that tree was the sweetest little variegated hosta plant that I just noticed late last Summer.  By then, it had been trampled by little kid feet.   This Spring, I decided to be proactive and get it out of the spot where it was going to be stomped on and move it.    Last May, I picked up two different hosta varieties (Christmas Tree and Fantabulous) and planted them around the large Oak Tree that we have a rope swing hanging from in the yard.  If you go check out that post, you'll see that the landscape plan calls for hostas around the tree .   So, I figured, I'd take this little hosta and move it to right around that tree.  This photo doesn't really give you a sense for the scale of the leaves, but they're small.  And the color of this is quite nice - the variegated edge is yellow, not white.    This is one to watch this Summer.  If I can get it establishe