Why I Oughta...

 Earlier this week, I received this text message letting me know that my ballot was received by the Clerk's office at DuPage County and has 'been processed'.  It came via the BallotTrax system that they are using for mail-in voting this year.   Have to say that the system is pretty great and gave me a lot of confidence that my ballot both was on the way to me AND that it had been received by the County for counting. BallotTrax bills itself like this : BallotTrax is designed to track mail ballots and absentee ballots through the postal stream and proactively push ballot status notifications to voters, thus increasing election visibility and vendor accountability.  By integrating with State and/or County election offices, print vendors and USPS, BallotTrax knows when a ballot has been printed and mailed to a voter, returned from a voter, received by the election office and accepted for counting by the election office. I've made it pretty clear that I don't love govern

 Back last Summer, I bought 15 Hicks Upright Yews in small 2# nursery containers when they went on sale at Home Depot and planted them in a row near the back of our rear fenceline.   I planted them in July and watered them in with a soaker hose to keep them alive.  The first Winter, a few of them were eaten by rabbits , but all of them came out of the cold alive.   By June of this year, they had put off their first full-season growth and last month, a few of them had produced their first arils (berries).   I wanted to document how they stand - going into Winter - this year.  Below, you can see a full photo showing the yews from edge of hedge to edge.   The gaps haven't filled in much (yet), but I can start to envision what they'll end up looking like and still want to think about pruning them to be kind of like this 'swooping' hedge that I captured as inspiration . 

 In mid-September, I bought a series of perennials at the Morton Arboretum Fall Plant Sale including one of a unique, vase-like hosta named Praying Hands hosta .  After putzing around the yard by placing it in various places, I settled on digging it in along the north bed - about half-way back in the yard.  It is adjacent to some of the Guacamole Hostas that I planted this Summer.   I watered it in a few times and now, as we head towards the end of the season, I mulched it in with woodchips.  You can see the current state of the hosta below: I'm hoping that the little bit of layer of protection the wood chips are going to provide will help protect this unique cultivar over the Winter.  Come Spring time, I'll apply a layer of hardwood fine mulch and keep my fingers crossed that it establishes itself and makes an appearance.

Nat spotted a little guy hanging on our front door wreath recently.  He's one a pretty good job of hiding himself - via natural camouflage - amongst our wreath leaves (these are faux leaves) and what I think is hiding from predators like birds.  Can you spot him in the photo below?   Took me a second to see him myself.  But, below is an annotated version of the same photo.  Clever insect, right? So, what is it?  Appears to be a Katydid .  

 A week or so ago, I posted some photos showing how I'm trying to protect some of our smaller Canadian Hemlock trees from rabbits this Winter .  I originally planted six of those small trees.  One of them died that first year.  But, last Winter, two of them were devoured by something.  I'm assuming it was a rabbit.   So, this year, I'm being more proactive in trying to protect some of our evergreens from being eaten by those rabbits who are looking for a winter meal. That means that in addition to the Hemlocks, I've taken the same approach with poultry fencing with our Weeping White Spruce tree.  You can see that fencing set up in a ring below: The goal here is to keep the rabbits from being able to really go at this thing - but I know it won't be fool-proof.  I'm going to ring the exterior of the fencing with some wood chips to try to make it 'burrow-proof', too.  

 Most of our hostas in the backyard are now looking like this one you see below.  It has a blend of seasonal decline (the yellowing) and what I'm pretty sure is frost damage from very early this Spring.   We had a late frost - after these. had emerged and while they didn't show this much damage all year long, based on watching Monty Don's Instagram handle, he mentioned 'frost damage' on his hostas.  Here, below, is one of our hostas underneath the hornbeams in our backyard: And here, below, is Monty Don's post on Instagram talking about frost damage on his hostas: View this post on Instagram The hostas are dying back - but the damage caused by a frost on May 15th only apparent in the past week or so. I have often observed this very delayed effect. A post shared by Monty Don (@themontydon) on Oct 5, 2020 at 12:00am PDT Seems like the same situation, right?  He's calling it a 'delayed effect'.

Here's a look at the row of eight Frans Fontaine Columnar European Hornbeam trees that we planted for screening a few years back.  You can see the new house that was built next door to our house on the left and our screened porch on the right.  These eight trees have grown up and out and are providing us with quite a nice screen this Summer and Fall.     Our neighbors haven't moved in yet, so we haven't really tested how the screening actually works with real people in the house next door, but so far, it has been good.   This is a similar shot from 13 months ago that shows you the growth over the past year.