Why I Oughta...

Photo of a pair of Wave Hill Garden Chairs from Wave Hill's official site here .  This is not my photo above.  Back earlier this year - after a trip to Paris with Nat - I went on and on and on about our visit(s) to Luxembourg Gardens.  It was really the highlight of our trip together.  I posted about how they were (as the French do!) using cocoa bean hull mulch , their tree boxes , growing vines between mature trees , their special metal path edging , how t hey have enormous stands of Chestnut trees that they prune in a special way , and their pretty spectacular espalier garden . And...in addition to swooning over all of those items,  I posted about the chairs at the gardens .  Those chairs.  Really quite special.  There are a couple of worthwhile 'histories of the Luxembourg Garden Chairs' posts on the web, but this one from Fermob - the distributor of the chairs - is the one I'd spend my time on. It is interesting to me to think about how a garden like Luxemb

As part of my 2020 prep for the yard , my mind has started to wandering to tree planting and specifically thinking about tree planting in the front yard and parkway.   Above is a schematic that shows off some of the existing trees and my current (aspirational) thinking of what sort of moves I could make in 2020.  But, before I jump into the specifics of that drawing up above, let's look at the current situation. Let's start with our parkway tree situation.  Below is a shot from Google Streetview that shows off our one large Norway Maple parkway tree, the location of the 'old driveway' and this other tree that is just behind the sidewalk that I'm pretty sure is a Mulberry tree.  This Streetview image is a few years old and is of the house that was on site BEFORE we built, but the driveway location is pretty close to where the current driveway is located.  You can see the stretch of parkway between the driveway and the large Maple tree.  Keep that thought for a mo

A few days ago, I posted a photo showing the newly acquired Ash tree firewood rounds that the tree service left me from the teardown next door .  Today, a quick update on the progress I've made on the pile.  You can see quite a few of the rounds have disappeared.  In that post, I counted 45 or so rounds.  In the photo above, I count 13 Ash rounds and six Mulberry pieces. Where did they go? The answer:  To this new processed firewood stack against the fence in the back part of our yard.  You can see the stack in the photo below.  The firewood is bright and light-colored. I used a combination of a 4# yard axe and a 5# splitting wedge to process these pieces.  Here's a close-up of some of the wood that I split - and you can see few pieces of Mulberry wood (it is the yellowish stuff) in here.  I'll watch and monitor all of this wood for color (and checking) over the next 10 or so months and will post them in here in the garden diary. I picked this spot against the

That's us in the photo up top - this year in San Diego at Nat's brother's wedding.  And that's us on the front of our Christmas card for 2019.  If you received one, you can find the url of our family blog on the back and come visit all of the things we did this year.  I've successfully kept it out of being indexed - and a link from here to there - isn't going to happen.  Hope you can ignore the big blurred boxes on top of the kids and appreciate the wonderfulness that is happening in the photo.  All because of one person:  My dearest Natalie.  Merry Christmas!  Happy New Year.  Happy Hanukkah!  Happy Festivus!  Happy Solstice!  Whatever it is that brings you together with your family today, I hope you enjoy it.  I know I will.  2019 has certainly been Merry + Joyful.  This marks the 359th post of the year - and I'm on pace for another year of 365 posts - one a day.  But, that's for another day.  Today, let's enjoy the company of our little one

My love of columnar trees and what are often called Fastigiata form in trees is well-established.  I've posted about them many times here and have posted photos of my travels to Tokyo where they, too, seem to have been drawn to the columnar form .  I've planted a few different columnar trees in our yard including a *somewhat* columnar shaped Chanticleer Pear tree in a few spots.  But, the list of columnar or narrow trees and shrubs is pretty deep here on the blog: I  made the largest tree investment in our yard in a series of eight Columnar European Hornbeams as a screen .   I planted a hedge of small Hicks Yews - which are upright in nature - in the far back of our lot. We have a columnar Weeping White Spruce conifer near our fenceline in the back. This past Summer, we added a Dwarf Alberta Spruce to the backyard .  I planted - and lost - a Weeping Cedar tree a few years back.  After looking around for some other Columnar trees, I came across - and shared - th

For the first time , our blowmold 1 Santa Claus - sitting in his sleigh - has his three blowmold reindeer up and flying up, up and away.   He's in our front yard and all lit up with a brand new set of reins that are made of 30' of rope light from Menards.   I have been trying to think about how to get the reindeer to 'fly' for a number of years.  We didn't even put this set out last Christmas because I was caught in 'planning mode' too long and never got around to getting them to fly.  My initial design called for them to be 'wired up' between the ground and the large Maple tree in our front yard.  I went so far as to install two large metal eyelets directly in the trunk of the tree about 12 feet up in the air.  I was contemplating running some wire (kind of like the wire I used on the espalier system in the back ) from the eyelets down to some sort of grounding mechanism.  My initial thought was to buy one of those spiral metal things that

I'm posting this Festivus-related post here on the blog one day *before* Festivus.  Why?  Because a bunch of people who read these things happen to read them in their email inboxes. And those emails get delivered in the morning and include links to the blog post that I posted the previous day.  Hence...this post going up on the blog with a date of 12/22/19, but being delivered on Festivus - 12/23/19 - and we all can rejoice around the aluminum pole together.  Via Seinfeld Scripts , we can all see how the gif above is slightly off.  No mention of Harry in the first screen! KRAMER: No. (To manager of H&H) Ah, listen, Harry, I need the 23rd off. MANAGER: Hey! I hired you to work during the holidays. This is the holidays. KRAMER: But it's Festivus. MANAGER: What? KRAMER: You know you're infringing on my right to celebrate new holidays.. MANAGER: That's not a right. KRAMER: Well, it's going to be! Because I'm going back on strike. Come on Elaine. (Takes o