Why I Oughta...

Last week, I posted a photo about our first Disneyland Rose and mentioned how I would get around to posting photos of the other two.  Welp, here's the post showing off the other two.  These were 10th Anniversary gifts from Nat's Mom and I planted them in October of last year .  October!  It was late, but that's when they were shipped to us.  I put them on the southside of our house , in the kind of narrow space between our house and our neighbor to the south.  The top photo shows the Disneyland Rose that I put in a little bit more oriented towards the back of our house.  It has blooms!  The photo below shows the other rose bush that I planted closer to the front of the house.  It does NOT have any blooms.  And in fact, it seems like half of the bush has perished (the back half), but the front half is full of green growth.  If go back and look at the original plants, you'll note that the one that is doing better *this year* was also doing better when I put it

I've posted some Disney Parks maps on the blog here over the years.  Mostly for posterity sake and because the parks have been doing a nice job of tailoring the maps to specific windows in time.  Most recently, I shared this Tokyo DisneySea map and guide that celebrates the 35th anniversary of that overall park.  And earlier this year, I posted a holiday-themed parks map from Disney California Adventure and a similarly-holiday-themed one from Disneyland .  And here's one from a Halloween-time Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party . Today's post shows off a map (or as they call it a "Guide to the 2 Disney Parks" at Disneyland Paris.  The cover shows the dates of January 7th --> June 28th of this year and features some legacy Disney Parks characters (Mickey the Mouse, Cinderella, Buzz Lightyear) and the two new, shiny objects:  Marvel (Spiderman) and Star Wars (Darth Vader). Inside, there's a double-sided map.  First for Disneyland Park - which i

The last time we checked in on this large caliper Chanticleer Flowering Pear tree that is planted close to our front driveway was last Fall when it was totally off-cycle.  It flowered in early November .  But, I took that (oddly-timed) indicator as a potential sign of progress.  Looking back at this same tree in June of last year, I think that this year the tree is healthier.  It isn't perfect as there are still plenty of thin spots and some dead tips.  But, look at the photo from last year .  The leaves are a different color.   Darker green.  Seemingly more healthy, right? The culprit was the clay bowl that this tree was planted in and how it was drowning the tree.  At least...that's what I *think* was happening.  I dug out part of the tree on the low-side of the planting bowl and then used a post-hole digger to dig through the clay layer to make a kind-of drainage spot so the water had a place to run.  After I did this excavation project, it didn't take long for the

Another week and (sadly) another tree is lost in our yard.  Just last week, I shared the news of one of our Earth Day 2018 trees - a Weeping Flowering Cherry Tree - died this season .  Today, you can see in the photo above, that we've lost one of our small Canadian Hemlock trees that I planted on the North side of our property out back. This is the seventh tree I've lost since planting and the second of this season. The other six trees that have died are: Other "Lost" trees include: a Chanticleer Pear, a Dawn Redwood, a Corkscrew Willow, a Fraser Fir, a Canadian Hemlock, Weeping Flowering Cherry. And now *this* Hemlock.  This means it is the second Canadian Hemlock that I've planted that has died.   The dead (or mostly dead) Hemlock in the photo above is the one on the far right of the photo in this post.   The other five of them seem to be doing well with all of them showing both a little stress and some new growth. Here's the full list of tr

Our first Disneyland Rose bush is in bloom.  And it is a stunner.  We received it as an anniversary gift in September of 2017 and I planted it that Fall .  Wasn't totally sure it was going to make it.  But, survive it did.  And now the area where I planted it is a lush garden of green.  You can kind of tell from the photo above that it is surrounded with hostas and ferns.  But, compare this June 2019 blooming photo with the same Disneyland Rose plant one year ago .  Quite a different view. Not just because of the filling-in of the rest of the bed, but also the height and bloom numbers of this particular plant.  It is doing really well and provides a great pop of orange and pink in the sea of green.  Love it.   Last Fall, Nat's Mom gave us two more and I planted them on the side of the house .  They're, umm, not doing as well as this one.  But they are one year younger.    I'll snap a couple of photos of those as I get around the yard in the coming days. 

It's not dark yet.  But it's getting there .  Had the time of my life with my partner as we fell in love all over again. 

These large stemmed hostas are what I've been calling our "Teardown Hostas" that I planted right outside our kitchen window in the backyard.  I put them in the ground in October of 2017 and they came back for the past few seasons and have filled in the space really nicely.  Here's a photo of these same Hostas emerging for the first time in Spring of 2018.   I haven't posted about these particular flowers in the past, but I did post late last Summer about some white flowering hostas that are also, kinda, teardown hostas.  This post shows some in our backyard that throw off white flowers that I pulled out of the front yard of the house we tore down before we built.   The photo you see above show a different kind of stalk coming out of the hosta plant.  Normally, I see a series of those trumpet-shaped flowers that come from a central stalk.  If you look at the photo above, you'll see that it is more like a central flower that has emerged from the t