Fall in the Future.

9-2-11 SHORT HILLS: We have been back in NJ for a few days. The boys and Siobhan are on the way back to California. We had more damage here from Irene here than in VT. In the house, the basement was wet, but a couple sweepings cleared in out, and it’s almost dry now. There might have been a inch or two of water at some point because the power was out for almost a day, and the sump pump doesn’t run without electricity.

The yard was littered with leaves and branches, big and small, that the lawn care guys and I cleaned up. There is a huge pile of debris on the street waiting for the town to collect.

One small sycamore that I planted about thirty years ago, as a two year old sapling, was partially uprooted and is leaning on the electric wires. The power company is supposed to take it down. About half its root system is intact, and I wonder if it might send up new shoots. One other tree, a red maple, lost almost its entire crown. Two huge branches are laying in the neighbor’s yard. That tree also has a chance to survive.

Almost all the spring plantings look OK. One of the five cherry trees is marginal, but the others will make it.

In bloom: roses, rose-of-sharon, foxglove, lamium, hosta, fall wildflowers.


Signs of Fall-Asters.

Bottle Gentian. Those are not buds. That is as open as the flowers get. How are they pollinated?

Sedum.