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Backyard Fence line Tree Planning and Dreaming

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With the calendar turning over to the new year soon, my mind has naturally drifted outdoors to our backyard to think about what kind of 'tree planning' we should be doing in Spring.  Right after Christmas, I posted my front yard tree succession planting plan .  And because we've been filling our bird feeder, my mind has been focused on the area you see in the photo above.  I've covered this section of yard before with this Fall of 2017 post showing the landscape plan here . Of note, what I'm showing here differs from what the plan includes, but that's because the plan doesn't call for many new trees, but instead uses the existing trees and augments them with shrubs. To set the context - or edges - of this image, you can see two trees that I've posted about before. First, in purple, on the left is the Weeping White Spruce Columnar tree . And, in red, on the far right is the Weeping Cedar tree that I planted and lost .  I've left the corpse

Winter Damage - Japanese Cherry Tree - January 2019

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I was out puttering around the yard on a mild Winter day recently doing a little bit of bud inspection to see what trees had put off when I found this break in this Japanese Kwanzan Flowering Cherry Tree in the backyard.  I bought this tree in May of 2017 when it was a small (maybe .75" caliper) tree from Menards after I had just come back from my first trip to Tokyo where I saw *their* Cherry Blossom trees.  The tree (in the garden center at Menards) caught my eye because it was flowering these beautiful, puffy, almost-peony-like pink flowers . At the end of June/early July of 2017, right when we were moving into our house in Downers Grove, I got around to planting the tree in the yard .  About half-way back in the yard, on the southside of the property.  Not sure, exactly why it ended up there.  Just *felt* right at the time.  Looking at the tree now, I think it is in a good spot and the placement ended up being appropriate. The first season it was in the ground - Spring

Starry Night Under the Oaks In Wisconsin - January 2020

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Thanks to the fine folks who are tuning the Night Sight feature on Google's Pixel devices , I was able to capture this night sky reigning high above this mighty Wisconsin Oak Tree.  You can see some of the stars brightly lit up behind the large and wandering limbs of this old Oak Tree.  I'm certain that I could have gotten an even better photo, but it was cold at night, and I was wearing my house shoes.  So, that meant that I had to get to the edge of the porch and just *aim high*. 

Lego Walt Disney World Cinderella Castle Build - Lost Bag 7

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Last Summer, I posted about how we were kicking off a new LEGO build of the Walt Disney World Cinderella's Castle with the kids.  In that post - dated July 9, 2018 - I mentioned that we had started the project seven days prior (July 2, 2018) and talked through how we had encountered some trouble with the early steps in the build due to lost parts.  One of the kids received this as a birthday present a year or so ago and I made the mistake of putting the big LEGO box in the room with the rest of the LEGOs at our house.  With young, curious kids around, they couldn't help themselves and opened the box to look at the parts.  That lead to opened bags and, ummm, missing parts.  From that July 2018 post : Also, Step 3 is where we already ran into trouble. Why? Because why wouldn't a seven year old who has this Castle set in her bedroom for seven months open up bag one and tinker around. The only problem? When we sat down to do it together, we had to scavenge together

Ice Melt Concrete Safe - Calcium Chloride

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In November, I posted about how I had applied a second coat of concrete sealer to our driveway in an attempt to preserve it as best I can .  Part of that preservation is also trying to NOT use rock salt on it to melt ice and snow.  That's a best practice - not using salt - that was shared by our builder, but you can also find it online all over the place.    Some folks call salt the "#1 enemy of concrete" .  So, I try to take care of my driveway without salt or any other melting products.  The issue is that our driveway is on an incline.  You might not be able to tell from this photo , but we're uphill from the street to our driveway. Have you ever come across a concrete driveway that looks like this ?  Pitted and full of pockmarks?  That's very often because of salt damage.  From this story : The pock marks are likely from rock salt deterioration on your concrete drive. It can be caused by using rock salt (sodium chloride) to melt ice on your drive, or c

Tribute/Return Sports Videos + Michael Jordan + YouTube Comments FTW

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Over the break, I found myself watching this Toronto Raptors/Kawhi Leonard 'Return' and Ring Ceremony video on YouTube and that lead me down a rabbit hole of 'return' video tributes.  There's a bunch of Derrick Rose coming back to Chicago clips and there are other things like this King Felix steps off the mound for the last time in Seattle video .  And there's this Mariano Rivera All-Star Game entrance video - which might be the best tribute out there.  He trots in to his "Enter Sandman" intro music and the diamond is empty.  Standing there to a full team and stadium standing ovation he takes it all in.  Pretty awesome. But, on that journey down video lane, I also came across this video that I've embedded above showing Michael Jordan returning (for the last time) in 2003 to the United Center as a Washington Wizard.  Lots to like about this (including how they did a sweet little fake out with the "From North Carolina, at 6' 6"

Update: All Four 2019/2020 Amaryllis - Early January 2020

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This is the seventh post in the series on this year's (welp...technically, I suppose they're *last* year's) amaryllis bulbs.  The last time we looked that them was right before Christmas on December 21st and 20th .   On the 20th, I showed how the Star of Holland was blooming in a spectacular fashion with four blooms on two stems.  Then on the 21st, I included a few photos showing the progress of the other three amaryllis for the season; Cherry Nymph, Apple Blossom and Red Lion . We went away for a couple days for the New Year and came home to the four pots you see at the top of this post.  On the far left is the Apple Blossom.  Has fully bloomed and is a beautiful white with some red/pink lines running through it and a light green center.  It is much more pale than the Star of Holland.  I also had just one stem come up on this bulb.   But, it also was the one that was timed the best.  It had it's first open bloom arrive and open fully on Christmas Eve.  N