Why I Oughta...

This year's large Amaryllis bulb is this double-flowering Cherry Nymph bulb that I bought at Wannamaker's last weekend.  One year ago today, I posted about last year's Christmas Amaryllis getting started  but, that version ended up falling a little bit behind of schedule.  By mid-December, it was just starting to send up the trunk . And it didn't bloom for Christmas .  It eventually bloomed in January  and then we were treated to a second flower in March . I treated it with an 8% alcohol treatment last year and I think that worked to limit the height and make it leggy.  I wonder if that kept it from blooming on time? This bulb was $14.99 from Wannemaker's - as those are the ones that seem to work every year.  But, I'm also going back to the Menards Amaryllis to try those again - with the kids. As for this Cherry Nymph - below you can see the large bulb before I stuck it in the pot. And here is it planted in the new clay pot. I am planning on

Just a little bit over a year ago, our Dawn Redwood looked like this .  It had mostly browned-out and was ready to shed all of it's needles.  Today, you see it above - a mix of brown and green and most of the needles still hanging on.  If you look closely, you'll see that I've attached a bamboo shoot to the top 1/3rd of the tree.  I did right before Halloween when we had that heavy snowfall come down. If you look back at the 2019 tree inventory post , you'll remember that this tree grew 3 full feet this season.  And that the tip of the leader was all green.    That means that it is pretty weak and thin.  That snow fall was tipping this thing over and I was worried that it would snap off - like the Pear Tree we had in our old backyard in Elmhurst did in 2010 .  I haven't fastened it all the way to the base of the tree, but I'm thinking that's ok.  I'm trying to protect the most vulnerable part - the green growth at the very top - from Winter damage.

This is one of my neighbor's Ash trees.  They have a half-dozen or so that have are dead and still standing.  The photo above is striking for two reasons:  the worm-like pattern that is on the tree is the most noticeable.  But, look closer:  see all the holes?  All over the tree?  That's from the Emerald Ash Borer and why the tree is dead. Here's a closer look at a couple of the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) holes on this tree: There doesn't appear to be any of the Borers hanging around as I presume these trees were killed years ago when the Borer first appeared in Illinois.  The Morton Arboretum suggests that the Emerald Ash Borer is so pervasive that it expects that EVERY Ash Tree in Illinois will be killed .  EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.  What happens when all the Ash trees are gone?  Will the Borers move on?  Fly somewhere else?  Just die off?  Or, will they adapt to the environment and start to attack other species of trees?  That's terrifying. Here (below) is

A couple of days ago, I posted some photos of a snow-downed limb from one of our massive old Oak trees in the yard and mentioned that I was going to cut and begin to dry the limb for firewood. "Cut early.  Burn late." That's what the old-timers say about firewood.  Especially Oak as it takes upwards of a year (or more) to properly season and dry out.  I figured I'd try a little experiment here and monitor how long it would take to dry out and get down to where the seasoned wood that I buy is when it arrives (under 15% moisture ). You can see in the photo above, that this Oak firewood is measuring 24.5% on the C setting of my moisture meter.  I'll try to measure these pieces of Oak over the next year and see if we can establish the timeline for seasoning downed Oak limbs. Below, you can see some of the pile that I've made out of the limb.  Some of it has naturally split while other parts of it are narrow enough to not have to split. I've be

A week or so ago, I posted some photos of a large Willow Oak tree from a  visit to a corporate headquarters and referenced some other landscaping there (the cloud-like hedge ).  The campus is surrounded by a TPC golf course named Southwind and has quite a few mature trees.  They also have done a nice job of creating some educational material and signage about some of the trees they have on hand including this Bald Cypress or "Baldcypress" as the sign indicates. We have a tiny Bald Cypress - or Baldy Cypress - out front on the north side of our driveway.  According to my inventory this Summer, it grew just 1" in height . But...back to the sign:  the second sentence reads: "The raised conical knees, part of the root system, are believed to help the roots attain oxygen." Raised knees?!  What the heck?  I had never heard of Cypress Knees.  But...looking around the tree - and sure enough - there were a bunch of these surface roots: More Cypress Knee

This photo above - of part of our driveway - is a few weeks old, but I wanted to drop this down here on the blog, so I could refer back to it in terms of house maintenance.  When we built the house, the concrete guys laid down a nice thick concrete sealer on top of our brand new driveway.  I subsequently worked earlier this Summer to powerwash the whole thing and put on a first coat of sealer.  That meant that it was about two years old before I put on a second coat. Then, late in October, I found a day that was 'right' in terms of temperature (air temps in the 50's and rising for a few hours, surface temps in the 50's and no rain in the forecast).  So, I quickly grabbed the garden sprayer, filled it with sealer and slopped it on.  I used this SealBest Concrete Sealer from Menards (not the high gloss stuff) that retails for $79.99 for five gallons .  You can see it in varying degrees of absorption with a purple/white-ish hue.  And, as I mentioned above, I used a ha

A couple of weeks back (the day before Halloween), we had a snowstorm that came on while many of our trees had almost ALL of their leaves on the branches and limbs.  The photo at the top shows some of the trees and how there are still TONS of leaves on them.  It also shows a big limb that came off of one of the big/mighty Oak trees that we have in our yard.   Those two things go hand-in-hand.  The heavy, wet snow on trees that were still carrying all of their leaves caused a bunch of tree damage in our neighborhood.  I worked hard to clear as many of the low trees as possible of the snow (using my blower), but this is the damage that we incurred.  Some of our neighbors lost similar branches and I saw one tree crack right in half up the block.   That limb might not look like much, but after the snow melted I started to cut the thing back up so I could get it out of the yard.  It was all alive and therefore HEAVY.  Full of life (and water).  Too bad, right?   I cut a cro