Why I Oughta...

Yesterday, I shared a post talking about the concept of creating curvilinear flower beds in landscape design and how one of my initial backyard projects is to move towards a final shape with our beds.  That requires us to carve up a bunch of the current lawn and creating new beds that jut out into the grass.  But, before I can even begin to think about how to make those swoop'ing, curved beds, there is some thinking that I have to do in in order to get both ready for the days of sod removal AND what has to happen AFTER the creation of the new beds to get them ready and dressed for the season.   To arrange my thinking - and to pressure test on what I want to do - I thought I'd create an individual (for me) order of operations document that details the steps in the order I need to take in order to make this all work.  So, let's go. 1.  Remove our Automower wire.   Around the entire perimeter of our backyard, we have a low-voltage green wire buried about 3" or so from th

I've talked and talked and talked about our backyard landscape plan on the blog over the years and I've made a lot of progress towards realizing the vision laid out there.  But, because I'm doing things myself, my best laid plans don't always work out.  And, one of the ways where I've been having trouble is in laying out the beds in the back.  You look at these ideal woodland gardens and any backyard garden of note, one of the things that you often see are beautiful, graceful, swooping curves that mark the edges of the beds .   In poking around the Web, I found this post from Sue at Not Another Gardening Blog that was part of her " Good Lines Mean Good Designs " series titled: Curves Wonderful Curves .  Those posts are almost ten years old, but they're just as valid as today.  And, for a beginner gardener like me?  They are *just* what I needed for where I am on my gardening journey right NOW. In the  post , Sue introduces (to me) Curviliear Form for

If you ask me what my favorite plant type is, I'll answer by talking about ferns.  They're my favorite plant type to grow.  When I talk about ferns, I mostly talk about my love for outdoor, perennial ferns.  Ostrich Ferns were my gateway drug .  We have others, now.  Like Japanese Painted ferns .  A Lady Fern that I planted last year .  And a big, happy unknown cultivar "teardown" fern deep in the yard .  We plant Foxtail ferns what seems like every year. Nat also keeps a big Boston (I think) fern on our front porch during the Summer and we've tried to overwinter it upstairs.  It has lost a LOT of leaves/fronds, but there's still a lot of green, so maybe it will come thru. I also added an indoor fern this Winter when I bought my first Maidenhair Fern .  What is supposed to be a finicky fern has - so far at least - been ok for me. I keep it pretty well watered and thus far, it hasn't shown much stress.   But, for a few years now, there's been another ty

 Last week, we were snapped back to reality with a heavy, wet snow.  False Spring had come and gone.  But, what remained after the snow fell were still some signs of Spring including these tulip starters that had come up from the mulch.  With the snow laying on top, it suddenly became VERY easy to figure out how many of these tulips were up and where they were located.  I suppose you can call that a silver lining, right?

There were more than ten large birds flying together in what you could call a boil . Or, a kettle or even a cast.  I missed much of them, but was able to whip out my phone quickly and snap these photos over our backyard on a recent afternoon.   No idea what type they are, but based on my bird feeder visits, I'm guessing this was likely a boil of Cooper's Hawks . The photo below shows seven of the (more than ten) hawks in the low-flying boil.

Last Fall, we went NUTS at the Morton Arboretum Fall plant sale.  Bought all sorts of stuff - some that made sense, some that didn't - base don our plan and priorities.   And, some of the decisions kind of landed in the middle.  They sorta made sense.  But sorta didn't.  One of THOSE was the trio of Twinkle Toes Lungworts that we bought and planted on the south side of the property .   Buying those didn't make sense because they're NOT in our plan.   But, buying them *did* make sense because of a few things:  they're blue.  And they grow and flower in deep shade - which we have tons of - and they flower in Spring - after Hellebores and before annual flowers show off.   After planting them, I mulched them initially with some wood chips and then left them alone.   There's some good news - in that it seems that all three are back this Spring.  Here's the little bit of green foliage that has emerged from the base of these plants: You can see the fuzz on the dea

Last year, we added a Harry Lauder Walking Stick tree to our backyard after seeing it a drive-thru buying experience at the Growing Place in Aurora.  We first saw - and fell in love - with this curving, interesting tree at Disneyland Paris outside of their Haunted Mansion (called Phantom Manor ) and knew then that we should buy one of these contorted trees.  Where we planted it ended up being close to the 'focal point' we were trying to design along with the apex of the 'nook' that will (eventually) hid the fire pit area.  The tree came with a bamboo pole that the tree was growing around and I pretty much just left it as is after planting.   But on a garden walk around recently, I noticed that the tree had begun to really grow AROUND that bamboo pole - especially down near the bottom.  So, I went ahead and tried to remove the pole, but it turned out harder than I expected.  After some sawing, cracking and twisting, I was able to remove the central bamboo pole.  But, no