Nearby Snow.

10-30-13 VERMONT: A taste of things to come with a dusting of snow this morning. Things warmed up a little, and the sun came out, and all the snow went away.

I pulled all the rotted baseboard molding this afternoon and replaced it with white AZEK trim boards. AZEK, made of PVC like plumbing pipes, comes in planks of different sizes. I used 1 X 8 X 8 feet boards, forty feet of it. It looks pretty good.

There was a pileated woodpecker in the apple tree by the deck. The tree has been swarmed by robins, doves and lots of smaller birds all carb loading on the crab apples. The woodpecker ate three apples and flew off before I could pick up the camera.


Morning surprise, only a dusting that was gone by noon. The pileated woodpecker in that apple tree left before his portrait.

Crows on the Move.

10-29-13 VERMONT: A very different day, cloudless sky, no wind and temps in the forties. I did more ‘getting ready for winter chores.’ I filled holes in the flowerbeds, Maizie’s contribution to gardening. I cleaned out and cleared the veggie bed, and Brady the horse was right in there trying out the weeds. I replaced two broken fence rails.

The pasture looks like a pasture with all the weeds, stalks, saplings, and shrubs gone, there’s a lot of grass under all the overgrowth.

About a hundred crows were flying around today, all caw, cawing to each other. It was not an organized looking group, but a scattered flock with clumps of stragglers. They went southeast in the morning and west in the evening. A pair of hawks dropped into the crowd but were chased away by the leaders.


Well, I guess there were a few clouds. Mowing the pasture uncovers the grass hidden by all the weeds and saplings. It actually looks like a pasture.

More grassy pasture with pond.

Brady says,"Thanks for the grass and those apples."

Reflections make any photo.

Distant Snow.

10-28-13 VERMONT: Today I finished the beds around the house, including the daylily bed and started on the veggie bed. I also changed the furnace filters and repaired the outside bulkhead door. Josh and his crew were here today to mow the pasture. It always looks great after a mowing. He might bring calves to pasture here in the spring.

Today we had sun, clouds, rain, snow and all assisted by brisk winds—very exciting. It actually wasn’t too bad except during the snow flurry.

Speaking of snow, I could see both Lafayette, along with Lincoln, and Moosilauke toward the end of the day when things cleared a bit. They are all snow covered. A grizzled neighbor says that when those mountains have snow, our snow comes two weeks later.

I forgot to mention what is still blooming, even if most are winding down: asters, hosta, echinacea, cimicfuga, lamium, witch-hazel, chrysanthemum, nodding ladies’ tresses, boltonia, phlox.


Layafette has a cloud shadow on top, Lincoln is to the right.

Moosilauke has two peaks the higher one is on the left.

Fall Chores.

10-27-13 VERMONT: We’ve been here for a few days, in fact Judy is already back in NJ. I am doing the fall clean up and other chores. I put up storm doors the first afternoon and the next day pulled all the garden hardware out of the beds, border fences, plant supports, and put it all away. I pulled the siphon hoses out of the pond, drained all the hoses and put them away. We put the boat in the barn and moved the picnic table to the terrace. Then I started cutting down all the dead stalks from the beds on the east side of the house, and finished those beds the next day. There were four cartloads of cuttings. It has to be done carefully by hand with a hedge trimmer to spare the biennials and the plants that are still in bloom or still green. Today I did the beds on the west side of the house and got five loads of cuttings to dump in boggy spots in the pasture. Tomorrow the beds north of the house and the outlying beds and the veggie bed are on the schedule which may take two more days.

The pond is down about 7 or 8 inches and looks a bit clearer after almost 3 months of draining the bottom with the siphons. I’m hoping for clearer water when it refills. I drained about one third of the pond capacity—we’ll see.

The fall color here is mostly finished, the best color would have been while we were in Turkey or shortly after. Now the burning bushes, viburnums, beeches still have some leaves and some good color.

The house trim painting is finished, and the repair of the rotted sills under the old house front door is done. If the weather warms up again, I’ll paint the new clapboards. I still have to replace some rotted, external baseboards and at least one broken fence rail.


Color from burning bushes and viburnums.

Cimicfuga is a late bloomer.

In front of the house--before clean up.

And after.

The Frick Collection Special Exhibit.

10-23-13 SHORT HILLS: We had a nice afternoon in the city at the Frick Collection. The museum is the house, its furnishings and art of Henry Clay Frick and his family. He was a coal and steel baron and partner of Andrew Carnegie who built this house on a whole block of Fifth Avenue between 70th and 71th Streets.

In addition to their regular collection, they have a special exhibition of Dutch paintings from the Gallery Mauritshuis. Including Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring and works by Rembrandt, Steen, Hals, ter Bosch, Claesz, Fabritius and a few others. A small picture, The Goldfinch, touched me the most. It is a European goldfinch, rather different from the American one and, as you can see, a captive.

The magnificent regular collection has several Turners, Gainsboroughs and Constables among many others, and Holbein’s portraits of More and Cromwell, for Hilary Mantel fans. We’ve been there before, but it’s worth regular visits for the setting as well as the art.

After the museum, we aired out in Central Park before dinner at Café Boulud.


The Frick Collection center courtyard is enclosed and outfitted with a fountain and statuary.

Another view of the indoor pond.

Goldfinch, European, distantly related to the American species. The red face is totally different from our finch's. This seventeenth century Dutch bird is a captive as you can see.

Central Park at 76th St and 5th Ave, with an outdoor pond with mallards.

A Night at the Opera.

10-21-13 SHORT HILLS: We were in the city, NYC, Saturday for a night at the opera, the Met, to hear ‘Eugene Onegin’ by Tchaikovsky. Because no one was using the Lincoln Tunnel that night, we zipped in and were early for our dinner res so we stopped in at the Folk Art Museum just across the square from Lincoln Center. They have a quilt exhibition, modern quilts, some with trompe l’oeil effects and a huge weather vane that is a permanent part of the display.

Café Fiorello was its regular cacophony and even bit more hectic than usual, if that’s possible, but we both enjoy the menu and the crowd.

At the main event, the voices, Anna Netrebko and Mariusz Kwiecien as the principals, and the music, Tchaikovsky conducted by Pavel Smelkov, were really awesome.

The sets, however, were dark, drab and disappointing. I remember the Met from years ago when the sets and effects were gorgeous, brilliant and amazing. The sets are an important part of the show and the experience. Some of the new productions I find wanting, they’re stark and colorless and depressing.


Folk Art Museum-quilt.

Folk Art Museum-weather vane with photo of original location.

The Met, before...

and after.

Unknown Shrub.

10-19-13 SHORT HILLS: I think I know everything growing here in our yard, but I still occasionally stumble across something I can’t identify, usually a weed. The shrub/small tree in these pix was an unknown until just recently.


Spring flowers....

Stippled bark....

Fall berries.

So—anybody know it? I do now, thanks to an ID web site. http://dendro.cnre.vt.edu/dendrology/idit.htm The site belongs to The Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation at Virginia Tech. Using a leaf and following a decision tree on the site, I was able to ID the plant as Winterberry Holly. It’s in the Ilex genus like the more familiar English holly.

There are two iPhone apps that I have tried for plant ID. The first, VTree ID, is also from Virginia Tech and gives you a list of trees found in your area from your location. The list is by Latin name and provides a description and pictures of leaves, flowers, fruit and bark and the ability to email a question to ‘Dr. Dendro’. There is no way to get a name from a leaf or berry unless you email it in. I didn’t try that.

The other app is called leafsnap. It lets you take a ‘snap’ of a leaf while in the app. It sends the picture in and gives you a quick list of possibilities. It sounds great, but didn’t work well for me. It didn’t recognize the winterberry holly, not in its database, and had trouble with a beech tree leaf and an English holly leaf. Both the correct trees were on the list along with twenty or more other suggestions. It got a sweet gum tree with only two other choices. I love the concept, but the app needs work. The database has pix of leaves, flowers, fruit and bark and can be searched by common name as well as Latin name.

Both apps are free, and free is always good.