Tomatoes Are Dicots.

2-16-12 SHORT HILLS: Except for the last weekend cold spell, the mild winter continues. While there are no new spring bulbs opening, temps here are in the forties every day and in the low thirties at night. We have had a few showers but no significant precip accumulation.

The tomatoes have started. The Sun Gold germinated first, but the others are all showing activity. Tomatoes are dicots, short for dicotyledon, which means they have two seed-leaves. Dicot flower parts, think of petals, have four or five units or multiples of four or five. Most deciduous trees are dicots. Monocots have one seed-leaf and flowers with three parts or multiples of three. Bamboo, grasses and corn are monocots. True leaves appear after the seed-leaves.


Sun Gold cherry tomatoes, eight days old with two seed-leaves each.

Dogwood, four sepals = ?

Phlox, five petals = ?

Lily, double threes = ?
This is not a hard test.

Florida Forecast: windy and cold.

2-13-12 NAPLES, FLORIDA: Yesterday was cold here—45° in the morning. All the Floridians were wearing coats, hats and gloves. In Short Hills and Thetford it was 23° and 9°. Naples was also windy, up to 30 knots.

We did get out, walking out to the end of the town pier. People were surfing and fishing with pelicans watching the fishermen. Other birds were trying to stay out of the wind on the lee side of the shelter at the end of the pier.

We also hit the antique show in town.

Today it’s a bit warmer and calmer, and we’re headed to the airport.


Windblown Royal Tern on the Naples town pier.

Snowy Egret hiding from the wind on the lee side of the shelter at the end of the pier.

Boat Tailed Grackle also sheltering from the wind. Note the dark iris, a winter feature of the usually yellow-eyed grackles.

Judy sheltering under a gigantic banyan tree.

Here are the multiple trunks of that tree, sheltering many smaller plants.

Birds in the Glades.

2-11-12 NAPLES, FLORIDA: We’re back here for our annual visit to Ken and Carol. It’s cool and windy, this morning we thought it would rain, but it didn’t. After breakfast, we drove southeast and visited wildlife preserves on the edge of the Everglades.

Our first stop was the Marsh Trail in the Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge. We saw spoonbills, glossy ibises, anhingas, egrets, a raccoon and many others in an open marsh with extensive standing water fields. Further along Rte. 41, we stopped at Big Cypress Bend in the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park where we saw a momma gator with about 6 or 7 cubs, [chicks?, pups?, babies?], more water birds and waders. This trail was in a forested wetland.

Our last stop was on Turner River Rd. in the Big Cypress National Preserve where we saw lots of waders and lots of gators. There were wood storks, turkey vultures, white ibises, egrets, several gbh’s, tricolor herons, little blue herons, immature waders, an osprey, anhingas, moorhens, kingfishers and more. The waterways were sometimes forested and sometimes open wetlands.


Roseate Spoonbills.

Three baby alligators with yellow camouflaging.

Baby alligator about one foot long. We saw 6 or 7 hanging around Mom.

One of many adult gators.

Wood Stork, possibly immature nearing adulthood.

Wood Stork adult.

Tomatoes Are Started.

2-8-12 SHORT HILLS: It’s supposed to be a cold weekend, and there might be snow here tonight. As it happens, we go to Naples to visit Ken and Carol, perhaps good timing for once.

Speaking of timing, my tomato and corn seeds came from Johnny’s Selected Seeds yesterday, and I started the tomatoes. Last year I started them a month or so later than now, and they weren’t quite ready on Memorial Day when they go out in VT. If they’re bigger when they go in the ground, so much the better.

I started five types, two grapes, one Sun Gold and one Red Grape, and three slicers, a Defiant, a Big Beef, and a Heirloom Moskvich. I put 3 or 4 seeds in each of six cups for each variety—thirty cups and about 100 seeds. I expect to put out 3 or 4 of each plant in May.

Naples tomorrow.


Tomatoes-Day One.

XLVI.

Need I say more?

No, probably not, but I will. It was good to see the Brady Bunch go down again, and makes one question the value of prayer as a influence on the outcome of an athletic contest. In the middle of the season the Giants were 6-6, having lost four games in a row. Even making the playoffs seemed like a stretch, but after the Jets game, they got progressively stronger each week. Timing is everything. Eli has had some incredible fourth quarters.

Condolences to the Cowboys, Packers, Niners and Pats. Maybe next year the Giants can beat the Skins.

Ivy Review.

2-5-12 SHORT HILLS: It has turned cold again, but stayed sunny and seasonable. It continues to be a mild February. I haven’t seen any sign of croccus, but star-of-Bethlehem has sent up some foliage.

During the fall I noticed that the English ivy growing on a black pine was flowering and attracting many pollinators. How could anyone forget that post? If you did forget the date, it was 10-19-11. Anyway, I went back to look a few days ago and some berries have formed, they are still green and should ripen to a dark blue.



Green berries formed on some of the flowers.

Springish? Really?

2-1-12 SHORT HILLS: We have spring-like weather with temps in the sixties for a couple days. There was some rain last night, and the snow that we had is gone. We walked the dogs this morning, I wore a baseball cap and didn’t need gloves. Yesterday while in the yard, I saw insects swarming, new hatchlings, ready to pollinate something. Today I found snowdrops open, a dandelion open, a Vinca minor flower opening, some yellow forsythia buds and daffodils shoots up a few inches. All this activity is the result of the warm weather and not photo period. The days are still short, and the sun is still well down south and won’t be even half-way back to the Equator until February 21 or so.

The average January temperature was 37° in Newark, more than 5° above normal. We could have blizzards in February or March, of course, but the bugs and plants seem to be looking for an early end to a mild winter.

New blooms: snowdrop, Vinca, dandelion.

All these pix are from today, but the flowers had started in January!


Snow Drop.

Dandelion.

Vinca minor [creeping myrtle].

Daffodils.