Why I Oughta...

Earlier this Summer, I was poking around The Growing Place shade section and saw a hosta that (more than) caught my eye:  'Brother Stefan'.  It feels really interesting - corrugated of sorts.  They describe it (on The Growing Place sign) as 'puckered'.   I'm filing this under the [ plant dreaming ] tag - as I now am going to be thinking about adding it to our backyard.  Here, below, is the Brother Stefan hosta and if you zoom-in, you can see the sign I mentioned above:   The folks over at Walters Gardens have a listing up for this hosta, too.  From that listing, I see this list of really nice characteristics.  Some highlights: "large sized".  Check. "moderate growth rate". Check. "most spectacular hosta they have ever seen".  Check. "thick leaves".  Check. "slug resistance".  Check.  "tall".  Check.  "perfect focal point".  Check. "shade garden".  Check.  Oh, my.   New Hampshire Hostas c

A couple of weeks ago, I posted some photos showing a couple of volunteer locust tree seedlings that had pop'd up in our yard .  At the time, I wasn't sure if these were honey or black locust trees.  With a little bit more growing time, it is now clear that these are Black Locust tree seedlings.  They have - as you can see below - thorns on their main stem.   You can see those thorns in the photo below: Alas, it seems like this is, indeed, no free gift from nature.  It is a tree that the Morton Arboretum calls 'not recommended' since it 'spreads too easily .  Hence...why I'm seeing these seedlings.  I'll get out my pruners and lop these off before they get any bigger.

August marks six-month mark on my Bar Pizza journey.  Started back in March and have posted a few times including my ' pockmark progress ' and how I've tried both pre-and- post-bake ricotta .  I've recently settled some of that (I'm now using Chellino Ricotta pre-bake on my bbq chicken 'stunt pizza'.  More on that in a future post).    Here are a few recent photos showing my progress.   First, with so little yeast, I'm surprised by this kind of structure: Below, you can see a sort-of edge profile.  I'm happy with the thickness, the ply-ability and the crisp on these pizzas.  I do, however, give them first a cooling-rack rest followed by a post-cut dimple pan.   Here's a little frico below.  I've recently moved away from using any sort of cheddar - as it oils-off differently than the other cheeses I'm using. And the full monty - below.  Cup and Char post-bake basil. Here's another profile below: And the top-down, cheese only full monty

On our back patio, we have this solitary Volunteer Petunia at the base of our raised vegetable garden bed.  It feels like it tells the story of our backyard and garden this year in a way that I couldn't have predicted.   Not only did we NOT plant this color petunia this year, I don't think we planted it last year.  Back in 2019, we had some Supertunia Blue Skies in some of our containers that I'm now wondering if they reseeded or survived in some weird way to come up through the crack in our patio bricks.   Life has a way, right? Interested in the archives of various volunteers that have popped up over the years?  Head here: [ Volunteers ]. 

Putting a few things in the [ lawn diary ] in this post: cut length + domination line.  First, the cut length.  Back in June, I posted about how I was using Hydretain to try to reduce watering while bringing my front yard lawn down one notch on my mower - to 4 out of 6.   The past few Summers, I cut the lawn at 6/6 and while it was dark green and lush, it started to fall over a bit and was probably *too long*.  I mean...the lawn looked great ( 2019 early August when it should be failing ), but I wanted to push things a bit this year and see if I could handle the shorter cut. I posted this image in 2019 showing how when my mower was set to 6/6, I was getting between 3.5" and 4" of grass length .  Knocking two spots off the mower height setting, I'm now seeing between 2" and 2.5" of height right now.  See below for the current length: So far, so good.  We'll check back in with the lawn in late August after the full month of hot, hot heat has beaten the turf

Our backyard is mostly shade.  And, because of that, I'm a shade gardener and have been focused on adding shade plants to our yard over the past couple of years.  But, I haven't strayed too far from Hostas and Ferns.  I recently came this list of Shade plants that includes foliage and flowering sub-lists that I've been reading to get acquainted with some new ideas.   We also spent some time over the past few weeks at the Morton Arboretum walking the paths and looking at some of the gardens.  In particular, we spent an overcast morning puttering around the Fragrance Garden seeking inspiration based on seeing what they have planted in some of the shady spots.   Here's a few shots that include a mix of shade-tolerant perennials and annuals below.  This is where that list from Garden Design linked above comes in handy - for identification.  First up, a mix of some All Gold Hakonechloa macra grasses planted with (what I think are) Hypoestes (polka dot plant) and some bego

Sharing a note about Rex Begonias here in my garden diary .  I bought a few different cultivars of them and really LOVE them.  Unfortunately, they all failed.  For different reasons.  But, they all failed.  I want to try them again next year, but have learned a few lessons.  First, a little bit of learning about Rex Begonias.  I put them in containers on our front porch and back patio.  They're on this list from Garden Design of good shade plants for containers .  And, I think they are "good".  They are knock-outs looks-wise. But, they're not easy to care for (imho).   First, let's talk about the back patio failure.  I had these lovely pink/peach begonias in the white container on the stairs.   Earlier this year, we had a hard cycle of first drought, then an extended period (around the 4th of July) of rain.  It turns out, this container had a plug in the bottom of it.  It *has* a whole, but we were using it as a sort-of display container last year with a nursery c