Makeover.

10-26-17 SHORT HILLS: The madness has passed. The house has been roofed, painted, repaired, guttered and leadered. All the workman have taken away all the trash, tools, extra material, trucks, garbage and whatever. Damage to the plumbing and shrubs has been repaired, only in part for the shrubs. After they all left, I went around the outside of the house trimming broken branches and picking up more trash, two bags full, that they had missed. Now we wait a month for the window replacement.

While the work was ongoing, the weather was mostly dry, but since, we have had a bit of much needed rain. We have a fair amount of color here, and lots of trees, ash and walnut, are bare.

I saw Turandot last night with S-I-L Steve at the Met. Judy passed on the opera because of injuries from a recent fall. She will be fine, hopefully soon. The Zepharelli production is gorgeous and dazzling. Puccini would have been proud. The sets, costumes and staging were the way I remember the Met from years ago, extravagant and elaborate. The orchestra, under Carlo Rizzi and the two female leads, Oksana Dyka and Maria Agresta were especially good. Sadly, ten to fifteen percent of the seats were empty.

New blooms: witch-hazel.


Here's the house from the back with new roof, gutters and leaders, and paint job....

,,,,and from the front.

Burning bush in front is still green, but the one immediately behind is afire.

Burning bush and sugar maple.

Lincoln Center Plaza at the start of Turandot.

Curtain calls, anyone need a Halloween costume?

Dazzling sets for Turandot.

More Fall in Vermont.

10-17-17 VERMONT: We have combined chores with leaf peeping. Judy and I put all the outdoor benches away. I did a last pond treatment. I pulled most of the bed guards and all the plant supports. We drove up to Stowe to look for color, on Phyllis’ suggestion, and found one stretch of Rte. 108 that had a lot of red. We drove back on Rte. 100 along the edge of the Green Mountain National Forest and then took Bethel Mountain Rd. back to Sharon. It was all beautiful, deep valleys, mountain streams, waterfalls, mountain top views, but only scattered areas of color.

I sawed up the big broken limb of the red maple in the yard and a couple downed trees in the pasture, all on one tank of chainsaw fuel. The cut up pasture trees I just moved to the edge of the woody areas so that the pasture can be mowed. The big branch in the yard I cut up for the woodpile and split it the next day. The rotted parts and branch debris got dumped on the compost piles.

We had a couple days with Phil and Jackie, visiting from Arizona. We took Phil to see the alpacas and llamas at Janet and Bill’s.

Judy picked a last batch of tomatoes and made pesto with garden basil, just before a frost hit the garden last night. We need more frost to encourage the garden plants to go dormant so I can do the clean up in November. The fish are still active in the pond, and a flock of robins are eating crab apples.

Judy went back to NJ today, and I go tomorrow.

New blooms: witchhazel.


Some color our trip to Stowe.

The grass is still green, even if the leaves are turning.

Nice red and orange.

Not a selfie.

Witchhazel has tiny, late season flowers. They're easy to miss.

This foxglove has been blooming all season. I hope it survives the winter.

Lily the palomino, lives up the street.

Leaf Peeping Week.

10-12-17 VERMONT: We came up yesterday arriving before the overnight rain. It was in the forties, and then the thirties at night, which was a big change from the eighties we have been used to in NJ. Today was totally sunny, in the sixties, and with no wind.

After a bunch of errands this morning, we drove around this afternoon, hitting Sharon, Pomfret, Woodstock, Quechee and Hartford looking for color. It was a bit disappointing. There was a lot of yellow and brown, but little red or orange. I’m not sure if we are too early or too late. The color on our road is as good as any we saw on the loop.

In the afternoon I put up the storm door glass and took down the screen doors. We have a broken fence post that I will have replaced. The red maple that gives our best color lost a big branch that I will cut up and compost. Judy was busy converting the house from summer bed linens to winter. We put the canoe away in the barn this morning. The dogs love the cool weather, all the run-around space and the pond.

The apple trees are heavy with fruit, and Brady the horse is gobbling up any apples that fall on the pasture side of the fence. The birds are busy in the crab apple trees eating the small fruit. The pine trees are loaded with cones.

In bloom: asters, cimicfuga, boltonia, feverfew, sedum, chrysanthemum, helenium, black-eyed susan, echinacea, foxglove.


Early morning  of the tree line behind the pasture and Mt. Lafayette in the distance.

Aster with good color.

Cimicfuga, also called black snakeroot or black cohosh, is a late bloomer getting a lot of attention today from bees and other pollinators.

The colors are always better in the reflections.

Red maple at peak.

Deep blue cloudless sky.

Bright afternoon sun and deep shadows.

Nate Gives Us Soaking.

10-9-17 SHORT HILLS: We are getting the second day of much needed rain. Even though the sprinklers have been running, lots of stuff on the margins of the watered areas looked very dry. This is the remnant of TS Nate, which also brought us a glob of warm air. We walked the dogs this morning during a lull.

The house painters have been painting most of the week, and, I think will be starting the final coat when the house dries out. Then, later in the month we get new, larger gutters and leaders installed. Next month we get new windows. I look forward to being done with it all.

We were back in the city for dinner with Bette and Lonnie and Richard and Elaine on Saturday. Ousia, a Greek restaurant, is on the western edge of Manhattan in the Fifties. It’s new, has a giant rectangular bar, and served us a bunch of small appetizers and entrees in Med style.

During the week we were at The Farm, a local plant nursery, to replace a shrub pulled up by the painters. Actually the replacements, a pair of spireas, Spiraea x bumalda ‘Anthony Waterer’, went into the spirea bed that is away from the house so they won’t suffer the horrible fate of their predecessor. The ground was very dry down to a foot below the surface. I used a lot of water while planting, and the rain helps also.

The Farm looks wonderful in the fall. There are tables of mums, hanging baskets of mums, arrangement of large pots of mums all in vivid colors and a acre of pumpkins and gourds, you can get a hand painted pumpkin as well. They have a big pond with turtles, mallards, Canada geese, swans and a pair of ducks that I couldn’t ID.

New blooms: wild asters.


Many monarchs are working the flowers at The Farm. Those two nodules near the back of the body mark this one as a male.

Three of several monarchs and a bunch of bees on a tree hydrangea. There were also fritillary butterflies and an American lady butterfly.

'Tis the season....

View of the pond and mums.

Many mums.

A pair of ducks that I couldn't ID.

NYC Week.

10-1-17 SHORT HILLS: I’ve had a few days off since the end of the Icelandic Saga [an Icelandic word, BTW]. Here, the house is about to get painted. The crew has been sanding and replacing rotted wood for a whole week and are almost ready to start priming and then painting. The siding shingles have been sanded down to bare wood, for the most part. The foundation plantings have taken a beating, much worse than the damage from the roofers.

We have been in the city three times this week. Wednesday we were on the upper west side for dinner with Ina and Marcel at a neighborhood restaurant, Coppola’s, on 79 St. Saturday night we were in the village for dinner with Anna and Gardner at Villa Mosconi on MacDougal St. Today we were back on MacDougal St. for brunch with Sam and Lily at the Minetta Tavern.

Because we were in early today we walked up to Washington Square Park. There was a huge crowd lined up in a semi-circular gauntlet that had us puzzled until Judy quizzed someone and found that they were there for the start of a new season of a TV show called ‘The Amazing Race’.

Saturday afternoon we were dog walking with Lynn and Bill and Bella at Loantaka Park.


Washington Square Park-asters, fall bloomers.

The arch and crowds lined up to watch the start of a new season of "The Amazing Race'.

The Freedom Tower in the distance.