Why I Oughta...

Sixty days or so ago, I posted some photos of our three-bin compost setup that I have back on the easement behind our property.  If you go look at the bins in Mid-May, you'll see that the 'active' bin on the left is just about filled to the top.  Earlier this Spring, I added passive aeration and then made a mix of browns/greens that I had on hand.  Today, the photo at the top shows the bins in their current state.  The active bin has compacted significantly.  And the nitrogen/green bin (in the middle) has some clumps of turf and topsoil in it. A couple of things of note.  First, about the time of that photo in Mid-May, I added some compost starter to the pile .  And, I took a couple of bags of grass clippings off the backyard and threw them on top and mixed them in with my pitchfork in an attempt to get the ratio right for high heat. Here, below, is a head-on photo of my active bin.  You can see some of the grass clippings in the front on top and there are a few pi

A few days ago, I posted about suckers on some trees in our backyard that were struggling and didn't leaf-out on time that included one of our Chanticleer Pear trees.  At that time, I talked about how each of these trees seemed to be healthy when they went dormant last year, but all had different issues this Spring.  One of them (the Dappled Willow) started and then shut down.  The Chanticleer Pear tree was the most strange - as it was still green (under the bark), but had some suckers show up a foot or so from the root flare.  And, just as I posted that, I noticed some weird activity on that tree.  It seems that *some* of the branches started to leaf out.  Sparse-ly. But, you can see in the photo below that there are SOME leaves and even one white flower. If you look at the photo above, you'll also see the sucker about a foot from the rootflare.  This is the second Chanticleer Pear tree that had trouble like this.  Our driveway tree was troubled and confused and fl

At the beginning of COVID and the start of social distancing/stay-at-home, I saw some unique pizza pans from Lloyd's pans on Instagram and was 'influenced' (swipe up) to buy them .  These new pans are long and skinny and hold a lot of promise for me as a home pizza maker. I've been fine-tuning my formulations on these pans over the past 60 days and have had some success.  Still plenty of work to do - as the last time I used these I had a TERRIBLE flop - but I'm seeing some good results like these below: I've recently started to use some of our sourdough starter in the formulation.  I've consistently used a 1.5 cup of flour as the basis for the chassis.  I've historically used ADY, but over the past few weeks, I've been using three 'scoops' of our starter and just a little bit of ADY - which...we're running low on.  When I use the starter in bread doughs, I go the whole starter --> poolish --> dough.  But, in these p

The pair of Limelight Hydrangeas that sit to the south of our front porch are just about hitting their stride this season.  They're tolerating the heat and are presenting a pleasant shape and nice color. This pair has consistently performed the best of *any* of our originally installed landscaping.  I've tried to keep tabs on these over time here in the garden diary. One year and one month ago (Early Summer 2019) - They were just getting started for the season. October of 2019 - they bloomed and were drying out.  And just 45 days ago - getting started on the growing season. This pair has put off some HUGE blooms the past few years and I've tried to tend to them with some late Winter pruning in an attempt to give them some shape.  You'll also notice some rocks on the left of the photo.  Those are new this season and were placed there to try to control some erosion as there is a downspout pop-up located in this bed.  That plentiful source of runoff water m

The hot, hot heat has hit the Chicago Suburbs.  We've had 90-degree temperatures for the past few weeks and it has NOT been a good environment for anything living outside - including our grass.  Lawns in our neighborhood are struggling.  Even ones with built-in irrigation.  Ours is no different.  I've been cutting it VERY LONG (setting #5 on the mower - all the way up) and watering it as frequently as I can - typically in the very early morning.  Here's how it is looking right before I feed it the usual "4th of July" application: It is green, thick and lush - which I'm happy with for the most part.  I'm almost 100% certain that the reason for the partial success this season is due to the tall cutting height.  I have other parts - like in the back where the Automower cuts - that are cut shorter that aren't as healthy and other parts where the grass appears to have gone dormant.  As for the timing of this post and the lawn schedule, I'm j

There's a well-established pattern of a spouse using their social media presence to wish birthday greetings on their partner.  It is a nice little experience - in that one gets to express their birthday wishes and (typically), the partners share parts of the social graph, so the community of friends and contacts get to weigh in. And while, I *have* social media profiles, I actually don't use them to post.  But, like any child-of-the-Web-who-came-of-age-online-in-the-early-aughts, I have a blog.  And, I can use that to crow about our family MVP Natalie. I'm posting this on July 11th - which isn't her birthday.  But, like some of you, she gets the daily email that gets sent out with my posts on the following day.  So, when she reads this (or you are reading this), it will be her birthday. Nat is the glue that keeps us together.  But, she's also leading by example for our three kids in every facet of her life.  She's the leading voice in their world on r

It might be time to add coverage of my 'collecting mantra' to include plants and hostas.  You know the line that I tell myself at garage sales and estate sales .  Thanks to COVID-19, my days at garage sales and estate sales are limited.  So, too, are my trips to the Hardware Store.  But, on one of them, I did wander into the outdoor section of the garden center and saw a relatively inexpensive hosta that caught my eye.  You can see it above - and it looks totally ordinary, right?  It was just $4.99, but that's not the (only) reason I bought it.  The price was/is attractive, but the variety was the real draw here.  It is labeled as an Empress Wu Hosta.  See the tag below:   A quick trip around the Google Machine and I find something that shares the name Empress Wu, but in every instance, it is prefaced with the name Shadowland.  I went to the source - Proven Winners - because that's where the tag is from and they, too, label it Shadowland Empress Wu Hosta.  The