Why I Oughta...

 Just two days ago, I posted a photo of our waxed-based Amaryllis Christmas flower from Trader Joe's and mentioned how one of the flower buds was set to open .  That photo was from Christmas Even.  Today's post is dated January 3, 2021, but the photo below is from December 28th, 2020.  Just three days late and we have a lovely opened red Amaryllis flower with a bright yellow stamen.  So, this flower did far better than most that we've had and opened just three days post-Christmas.   This is the first time that we did a wax-base Christmas flower bulb.  And, based on the experience, I don't think it will be our last.  Not only did the flower bloom close to Christmas, the stalks weren't too terribly tall - which usually means that you loose them to flopping over.  These were short and sturdy stalks and a nice bloom on top.  The downside to this version is that we have NO IDEA what variety of Amaryllis this really is, but we can guess if we look at the most common varie

Back in October of last year, I posted some photos of a pile of Ash (or what I thought was Ash) firewood that I grabbed off of one of my neighbors who was taking down some trees .   After letting it sit around in the back of the yard for a few weeks, by the end of November, I had a couple of 2x4's from our basement project that I hauled back there to use as a sort of rack and stacked the rounds up on them to get them off the ground .  A lot of this stuff was wet and needed time to just dry out up off the ground.  Well...a month later, I found myself needing to get outside for 30 minutes or so and I decided to start to process some of this stuff.   Some of the rounds are cut to length.  But, a lot of them are not.  I don't have a chainsaw, so I decided to take a shot at the ones that were both small enough and cut to the right length.  I split them open and what I found inside looked a lot like I was expecting based on the previous pictures.  REALLY dark heartwood.  And lighter

 The calendar says 2021, but I'm still talking (and posting) about our 2020 Christmas Amaryllis.  This year (a year unlike any other), we didn't go all-in with Christmas bulbs.  In fact, I'd say that if it wasn't for Nat saving the day, we would have likely just skipped our Christmas flowers/Amaryllis altogether.  We didn't go to Wannemaker's for their Holiday Open House.  And I haven't been in a hardware store in months.  But, thanks to an impulse buy at Trader Joe's, we have this small, unnamed Amaryllis bulb in a wax base that Nat brought home in mid-December .  I'm posting this in January, but this photo is old.  I took the photo below on Christmas Eve and you can see that the flower was just beginning to emerge.  I'd say that this one got pretty.close to being right in terms of timing.

Today is six straight years of posting on my blog here.  Every day.  For six years.  And, it seems that I posted twice on one day in July.  And this is the ninth year since 2010 that I hit a post per day.  Seems the two years that I took off were in 2013 and 2014.  Why not go for seven years in a row, right?  Here's to an even better 2021 in the garden, yard and here on the blog. 

We started this 1000 piece Harry Potter puzzle on December 13th .  And by "we", I really mean "me".  The kids helped a little bit - mostly because the oldest one was desperate to get access to the project table in the screened porch where I set up.  That's become our LEGO and puzzle table.  By December 18th, I had the border mostly done and the colors sorted .  And by December 22nd, it was starting to come into focus .  Today is the 30th of December, but, I finished this back on the 23rd. Just getting around to posting it - what with the Christmas hysteria around the house.  A couple of busy, full days sitting and focused on the puzzle got it done.  You can see the complete puzzle below:  Or, really...complete in the sense that I'm done with it.  But, there were two missing pieces.  This puzzle was on loan from our friends.  They said there was one missing piece.  And now, I think we caused it to have a second missing piece.   This is the 3rd puzzle of quara

 Like the creaking of an old wooden ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the Spruce Plot at the Morton Arboretum isn't just a sight for your eyes.  If you listen closely enough, you'll hear some of the trees swaying and rubbing against each other - way up in the air.  The sound is really quite an interesting part of your visit to this area.  You can go anytime during the year, but I think Winter provides the most striking difference in the area. Have a listen to the swaying of the Spruce trees at the Morton Arboretum : I've written a few times about this particular path at the Morton Arboretum this year - and talked about while COVID has taken so much from us, it has also given our family the Spruce Plot at the Arboretum. Here it is in late Summer - August of 2020 - where everything is still green . Here it is in late Fall - early December 2020 - where all of the leaves have dropped and the Sun is able to hit you *just right* in the morning.   The video above is in early Wint

You can't swing a dead cat and NOT hit a Pinterest board or wanna-be Instagram Influencer without seeing their Elf-on-the-shelf shenanigans.  But, I'm here to say that our elf, Goldie, thanks to a certain someone, killed it this year.  He arrived, had a good time and hit the bricks as fast as he came.  Here he is feeding the reindeer:  I've covered Golide before - most recently in 2019 when he met my guy Hulk Hogan  and when he had tea time with a homeless lady under our tree .