Why I Oughta...

In all of the [garden diary] posts I've made here over the past three seasons, I seem to have failed to inventory most of our front yard shrubs.  I've posted photos of the buds on some of our hydrangeas , but have skipped over the rest.  Over the course of the next few days, I'm attempting to put down some entries here so I can reference them in the coming seasons.  First up is this Little Henry Sweetspire.  It sits in a little bed right beside our front walk adjacent to our driveway. We had it put in by Green Grass as part of our initial landscape plan and haven't thought much about it over the past few years.  There were three small plants here when we started and now you can see that it has grown and matured into a nice sized shrub.  It has some long, leggy shoots that have emerged this season as well as some underground shoots that seem to be more rhizome-driven. I have read online that we can take one of these rhizome spreaders to create a new plant - and t

This big happy fern is loving things back in the deep shade of our far back yard.  It is now almost in bush form and has doubled year-over-year from what it looked like last year.    I yanked it out of Nat's Sister's lot before she built her new house in Downers last Summer.  It was the middle of the Summer, so there was certainly some transplant stress.   I haven't done much to tend to this fern aside from a couple of what I'll call 'strategic' waterings.   Those were deep waterings of areas during the deep heat of July/August when I started to see things droop and wilt.  This is located behind the yew hedge that I planted earlier this Summer and will (eventually) be in the shadow of some Canadian Hemlock trees that I planted - if they grow! 

Am I doing this right?  Lol.  That's my lawn on the left and my neighbor to the south on the right.  I LOVE our neighbors, so I'm hesitant to even post this other than trying to get something in the [garden diary] to track in the Spring.  They do a really great job with their lawn and landscape and in fairness, they've had some construction this season and had a big pile of materials laying on top of some of their grass in this section for part of the Summer, so it isn't exactly...ummm...an apples-to-apples comparison.  But...still.... I was struck by the existence of such a ' domination line '.  (Thanks, Allyn!) The turf has some patch-y-ness to it, so my work isn't near done - that's for sure.  But, with this being the first season that I've taken care of the lawn in front myself, I'm happy with the color.  I fed the lawn at Labor Day with a normal dose of Milorganite and then applied some Jonathan Green's Mag-I-Cal after I had do

I posted this Mason Bee house structure to our fence back in early Spring of 2018 and it was immediately put to use with some of the cavities filled by Summer .  Posting this photo in the Fall of 2019 to mark in the [ garden diary ] that it seems that none of the cavities have been filled/utilized this season.  Early this Spring, I went in and tried to clean out all of the cavities that had previously been occupied in an attempt to make it as insect-friendly as I could.  For whatever reason....I don't think the tubes were used this season.  I've started to wonder if this is something that I can look to create as a Christmas gift for some family members?  There are plenty of plans online - but it is a simple project just with a cedar box with a roof structure, then following some best practices to make the best home for various insects .  My instincts are to go *big* and think multi-insect environment, but I don't think that's actually best for making something th

Above you can see what I've been calling our "Teardown Hydrangea" in its current state in the Fall of 2019.  I've documented this over time here on the blog since "acquisition" to today.  Starting with the beginning, in October of 2017, I dug some plants out of a yard down the street before they were tearing down a house to build .  In that bucket of plants was a hydrangea that looked really ratty.  Dry and unhealthy.  I didn't have much faith that it was going to make it.  And...frankly, I wasn't really certain that it even *was* a hydrangea!  Surprisingly enough, it survived the Winter and came back in Spring of 2018.  By last August, it has grown a bit and even flowered with a handful of blooms .  If you look then, this was the first time that it was showing off any lime-color in the flowers - which helps point me in the direction of the variety.  They're not (at least now) cone-shaped, but more ball-shaped.  I think that might mean that t

Above you'll see the current state of (on the left) our Everlasting Revolution Hydrangea, (middle) our dead Weeping Cedar tree and (on the right) our Tuff Stuff Hydrangea.  This post is the same photo from just over a year ago and you can see some big differences .  Of course, the Cedar tree is dead.  Sure...that's a difference, but this post is about the size and vibrancy of the hydrangeas on either side. First, the smaller one:  the Everlasting Revolution.  Planted in Fall of 2017 , this marks two years.  It is billed as being 'multi-colored' in flowers , so this is the one I was/am most excited about.  It is about 1/3rd of the size of the other one - planted at the same time, so it has fallen behind for one reason or another.  Here (below) is a closer-up photo of the Everlasting Hydrangea.  It has never flowered or bloomed.   But it has come back both Springs and looking at this photo from a year ago , it has more than doubled this season.  Next year will be t

The last time I posted photos of the pair of Disneyland Roses on the side of our house was right in the middle of the hot Summer in early July of this year .  At that time, I remarked at the time that one of them was much larger than the other - with the one being planted towards the front of the house/porch being smaller and without blooms .   Today, you can see a photo collage at the top of the post showing what these things look like come late September.  I've posted the individual photos below as a way to look back at them in larger format.   Planted in October of 2018 , these are growing at two very different speeds/pace. The first Disneyland Rose is the larger one - and it was larger in July, too.  When I planted it, this one had a small bloom on it .  Today, it is multi-stemmed and gaining some height and spread.  The blooms are big and bright.  The other one is smaller.  Just like it was at planting AND in July .  But it, too, is blooming.  So, tha