Why I Oughta...

As I mentioned in yesterday's post about the haunted bandshell from Lemax's Spookytown , Menards has a bunch of new (to me, at least) items in the Halloween Village.  Again....to be clear:  there's been a revolution and the Mayor of Mantleburg has been thrown out and the locals have opted to be annexed by other Villages.  Mostly by the Village of Craigslist. This isn't quite a building and isn't quite a figure - in the Lemax world.  It is technically classified as a 'Tabletop Piece" in the Lemax site architecture.   And, I think that's justified.  Menards had this Gateway Countdown featured *inside* of their SpookyTown setup - you can see it below: So, it can make sense inside of a Halloween Village setup. But, I think it could also make sense on it's own. The little bin holds the extra numbers on the right and you have to go in and switch them out everyday.  Or the kids have to go in and switch them out everyday.   Which, in our house mea

We recently caught up with the Halloween stuff that Menards has out for the season.  A trip to Menards during the late Summer/early Fall wouldn't be complete without a look at the Lemax SpookyTown buildings that they have set up.  I've done this for the past few years starting in 2016 .  In 2017, I started to post some animated images of the Spookytown buildings that moved including this Ghostly Manor building .  And last year, I posted a few of the Lemax Spookytown buildings, too . I snapped a few photos of the most interesting structures in Spookytown and will post them in the next few days.  Today, let's start with the "Symphony of Screams" - which is new this year .   It has light, sound and movement that you can see below: The full product page can be found here on the Lemax site .  This is a cute bandshell.  The problem?  The fine folks at Mantleburg aren't annexing any property right now and in fact have shed some of the additions via Craigs

After close to a year of thinking and planning for the installation of a row of Frans Fontaine European Columnar Hornbeam trees along our north property line, we had eight of them installed in late May of 2018.    Now, seventeen months later, I wanted to document in the garden diary where the trees are in their growth and maturation. A little bit more than a year ago, I posted some similar photos to document their growth.  Go check them out here .  They were vibrant and green.  But, very tapered and the gaps between the trees were large at between two and three feet in spacing. I posted again as they were entering dormancy in November and began to turn yellow last Fall .   The trees and limbs were mostly the same, tapered, tight selves.  Then again a few weeks later in late November when one of the trees dropped all of its leaves.  These photos give you a sense for the gaps in between these young trees last Fall. By April of this year, the buds that had been set the previ

Last June of 2018, I posted photos and details that documented the heights of the existing trees in our inventory around the yard .  In September, I posted two more tree heights to the inventory .  This is the annual check-in with those same trees. As a reminder, here's the heights that I documented in Summer 2018: 2018 Tree Heights  Saucer Magnolia:  81" North Flowering Pear: 112" Frans Fontaine Hornbeam:  113" Red Maple Sun Valley:  96" Crimson King Maple:  112" South Flowering Pear:  80" Flowering Cherry:  112" Dawn Redwood:  63" Bald Cypress:  51"   2019 Tree Heights Saucer Magnolia:  104".  (+23").  22% growth North Flowering Pear: 182" (+70").  39% growth. Frans Fontaine Hornbeam:  162" (+49") Red Maple Sun Valley:  108"  (+12") Crimson King Maple:  112" (+0").  0% growth. South Flowering Pear:  115" (+35").  31% growth. Flowering Cherry:  12

This mighty Oak tree came down in what is being billed as a "Microburst" storm up in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin last month.  We arrived the day *after* the storm.  Or...I suppose, the day *of* the storm since it hit at like 12:30 am.  The folks at the Kenosha News covered the aftermath and concurred with a meteorologist who billed the event a microburst . From their piece : A small area of Twin Lakes was hit by high winds that took down trees and left many residents without power early Thursday.  ...Aidan Kuroski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sullivan, said that a “microburst” storm with straight line winds estimated at 70 to 80 mph hit the area at about 12:30 a.m. “It was a very concentrated area,” Kuroski said. “Basically from Elkhorn and Walworth County down to Twin Lakes.”  Kuroski said the storm developed so quickly the National Weather Service did not have time to issue a storm warning. The storm produced some damage around the neighborh

My personality is such that I wasn't able to fully enjoy the Sunset Cliffs as much as other people when we were *close* to the Cliffs.  From a hundred yards back?  I was totally fine, didn't have to grab ahold of which kid(s) were close to me for fear that they'd run and leap over the edges.  And, I enjoyed them.  Saw a few sunsets from the front deck there, too.  It is no Hotel Del Coronado , but...as LD would say:

We picked up this copy of Life Magazine that features the opening day of Walt Disney World in Florida on the cover.  Being Disney people and vintage/Antique Mall people, this seemed like a good fit for us.  There's a lot of little things to note on the cover including the front row of characters (See Pooh Bear's costume?) The inside headline is all about the east coast move:  "Disney Moves East" with Mickey the Mouse leading the marching band down MainStreet USA. The biggest spread of photos is below and is from this pretty unique angle starting with the Rivers of America and Frontierland in the foreground and you can see the Seven Seas Lagoon in the background.  A few things to note - Frontierland really just had a cul-de-sac and didn't go over to where Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain are today.  And the show buildings where Peter Pan and Philharmagic are located ARE HUGE.  Likely due to the perspective, but still. Filing this under both [ V