Why I Oughta...

A few days ago, I posted about seeing an Indigo Bunting male bird in a splendid blue coat down at Waterfall Glen .  During the COVID-19 pandemic, we've tried to find time to get down to Waterfall Glen to go walking with the kids as well as dodging the crowds.  When we first went down there, they had the waterfall itself blocked off - in an attempt to keep from crowds gathering.  That was as recent as back in June. There's now a category tag for [ Waterfall Glen] here on the blog that hosts all the posts. The photo at the top of this post is now the second post featuring a Waterfall Glen sign.  One on of our previous walks,  I came across this Oak Tree identification sign and posted about it in June, too . This sign talks about the waterfall and the "men who built it" and mentions that between 1934 and 1938, a company of men from the Civilian Conservation Corps - as part of the New Deal - were stationed up in Hinsdale at Fullersburg Woods.  It was those guys

I recently got around to sticking the new Lady Fern in the ground in our backyard.  That's it - in the photo above - with the most  vibrant green foliage on the middle/right.  The story of how I bought this thing on a whim at Home Depot is here on the blog from a couple of weeks ago.  I took the photo here for the [ garden diary ] showing the location of the planting in relation to the River Birch tree.  Another way to think about the location is to take a peek at the photo above and notice the location of the River Birch and the clump of fern stems that you see in the top right.  Then, go here , and have a look at the reverse side of this from the lawn.  That post showing the 10 transplanted ferns is talks about the area where this one is located.  The bulk of those transplanted ferns were planted to the East of the River Birch, so this Lady Fern is going to hang out to the West of the River Birch.  The plan called for "12 Ostrich Ferns" in this area.  I initially

On a recent morning, we were out at Waterfall Glen - on the Waterfall side - and as I was walking back to the van in the little parking lot, I heard this bird before I saw him.  He (didn't know it was a *he* at the time) was making some noise and I looked up and with his blue coat, I couldn't miss him.  I grabbed my phone and zoomed in as best as I could and took the photo you see above.  I don't think that I've seen such a vibrant blue bird in our area, so I knew that I had to figure out who it was. It didn't take long - just simply putting [bright blue bird northern illinois] into the Google machine and you get this featured search snippet: I now knew what it was:  an Indigo Bunting. So, when I got home, I turned to my bird book and quickly looked it up.  Sure enough...take a look at that photo in the book: It is an adult male that I saw with what the book "cerulean blue" and I'm pretty confident that this is the first Indigo Bunti

There I was...watching Martha Stewart talk about gardening on a segment previewing her new show on CBS Sunday Morning when she came FOR ME.  Like...came FOR ME. Ummm.. Hi there.

Back in the Spring, I bought this tiny Horstmann's Recursive Contorted Larch Tree from an online nursery and planted it in the front/sideyard.  I watered it in and have been trying to baby it during the heat.  Today, posting this in the [garden diary] so I know what it looks like in the Summer of season one.  It has added some length to the tree, but due to it's weeping habit, it is hard to tell how much.  I'll add some measurements to this as I do a season-ending caliper reading later this Summer/early Fall. I also didn't get around to adding this tree to the 'inventory', so I'm correcting that now. This is tree #51 that I've planted and BY FAR the smallest one. The previous one was last week when we planted the other contorted tree -the Harry Lauder's Walking Stick  - which I mentioned was the "last tree" we had this year, but I stand corrected. 51 trees across four planting seasons. (For now...) 45 of those trees still ali

The last time I checked in on the full look of these Greenspire Linden trees was last Fall - November of 2019 - when they were heading towards dormancy.  At that time, the trees had been pruned for the year and had grown through a full growing season.  I also - at that time - was planning a different style of espalier: a candelabra.  If you go back and look at the photos in this post from November , you'll see how I was adding vertical supporters via bamboo rods AND encouraging more than 4 horizontal branches on the trunks.    The tree on the right - I had five or six horizontal branches.  And the tree on the left, I had five or six branches too.  This past week, I went out to these trees with my bypass pruners (Alas... I don't have a pair of those sexy Niwaki Secateurs ) and gave these trees their annual mid-year prune.  I normally take care of any branching that is pointing downward from the branches - and I did that this year.  But, I also made a call:  Forget the cand

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