Why I Oughta...

Not a better place to see the last one of these Star Wars movies than in the Tivoli - which I am guessing hosted all nine of them.  There are plenty of people out there that are saying the movie was bad, but I liked it.  And...I stayed awake the whole time.  These days, the theatres around us are all putting in this luxury lean-back seats.  Everytime I get into one of those, the movie has a hard time competing with my next nap. 

Today marks the 365th post on the blog - one per day - that spans the entirety of 2019.  And this marks the seventh year since I started counting that I've done that very thing: post online once per day, every day.  This also marks five straight years of posting on the blog - dating back to December 31st, 2014 when I posted from Coloma, Michigan .   Loved spending New Year's Eve there. This year, I'm posting from the "new" Lake - in a different state.   And I love spending NYE here, too! I posted 136 times (the first one this year was February 20th ) in the [ Garden Diary ].  Means that the garden diary accounted for almost 40% of the total posts here.  If I've hit five years, why not go for six, right?  Here's to a great 2020 in the garden.  And on the blog.  For those keeping track at home, here are the years that I hit a post-a-day: 2019 ( here's last year's post ) 2018 2017 2016 ( 366 posts due to Leap Year ) 2015 2012 - posted 35

We had a weird Fall this year - with some warm temperatures then cold temperatures then back to warm.  And then there was the early November snow event that came when many of the trees in our neighborhood still had almost all of their leaves on the limbs.  That caused a bunch of snow damage including taking down a good-sized major limb from one of the big Oak trees in our backyard .  When I say 'good-size', I'm talking about 40+ years old.  Check out the photos in the post to see the growth rings . But that tree damage was just one part of the lasting impact on the yard.  The other you can see in this photo above.  When the snow arrived, I did like I do pretty often:  created a little path out back for Lizzie.  If I don't make her a little path, she doesn't get out in the yard to do her business very easily.  Yes...she's a wimp.  Through and through. And...I also normally cut or shovel a path that gets us to our bird feeder so we can fill it in the mornin

This is the fourth in the series of posts about the Ash trees that were taken down next door that I've been processing with what they call CSS (cutting, splitting and stacking).  And this post brings us full-circle.  From tree to firewood.  Well....I guess, technically, "full-circle" will be when I actually burn this piece.  But...for now, let's call this 'full-circle'. Back in November, I posted a photo of my neighbor's Ash tree with a pattern under the bark .  In that post, I remarked that because they were planning on tearing down the house right next door, I wondered if I could scavenge any of the wood.  After talking to the crew taking down the trees, I ended up with 45-or-so Ash tree rounds.    After a few days of splitting and stacking, I have about 2/3rd of the wood processed and just about a Face Cord of wood put up . And in that post from a few days ago, I mentioned that there were a few pieces that showed off that same pattern we saw on t

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