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.

Iceland Day VI.

9-23-17 REYKJAVIK, ICELAND: We checked out of 1919 Hotel early and loaded on the bus for an early visit to the National Museum of Iceland before it opened to the public. I guess the Smithsonian, our tour sponsor, has connections. The museum tells the story of Iceland from medieval times to the present, mostly through the collection of artifacts. I found the carvings most interesting and assumed that there wasn’t much else to do in the long, dark winters.


carved and painted wooden panel.

Carved wood door from a church. In the upper circle a knight slays a dragon and rescues a lion who becomes his friend. The lower circle is an intricate pattern. It's suspected that originally there was a third, lower circle that was cut off when the door was moved to a new location. This is considered one of the best exhibits that the museum offers.

Carved wood mirror frame. The top image is very similar to the earliest gravestones in New England.

Whale bone carving depicts Norse or Christian myths.

Carved animal horn drinking vessel.

After the museum, it was off to the Blue Lagoon. The lagoon is a huge outdoor hot water pool. The operation is impressive. The entry fee gives you a towel and a locker opened with an electronic bracelet. You strip, shower, put on your bathing suit and then go outside through the cold air and rain and into the hot water. The color is from a reaction between the lava and the geothermal water. The water has been used by the next-door power plant before it goes into the pool.

There were about a hundred people in the pool and a long line of people waiting to get in. Reservations are required.

The water is chest deep requiring, for me, a crouch to stay warm or a cold shoulder. Included in the entry are silicon and algal facial treatments and a free drink from the full bar. The bartenders were wearing parkas as they served the patron in bathing suits. While in the pool, you can hardly see across it because of the fog, rain and steam.

After an hour or so, I was pretty well pruned and so got out, showered again, dressed and found Judy who had stayed dry at the Lava Restaurant. We all had lunch there.

After lunch it was time to go to the airport [KEF] for the flight back to EWR. The airport is just a hop from the Blue Lagoon. We had a last rainbow as we drive through the rain on our last bus ride.


Blue lagoon extends out in the distance and is scheduled to be enlarged.

People clustered around the bar.

Lava Restaurant, with lava piles outside.

Last rainbow on the last rainy bus ride.

A few final thoughts—Iceland has less than 350,000 inhabitants who host about 5,000,000 tourists a year, and the number of tourists is growing. Tourism has probably saved their economy after the financial crisis of 2008. There is construction everywhere in Reykjavik. The Icelandic krona is worth about a US penny. The language is Scandinavian and difficult to understand and speak. There are several strange letters. The island’s climate is fairly mild because it’s in the Gulf Stream even though it’s near the Artic Circle.

Iceland Day V.

9-22-17 REYKJAVIK, ICELAND: We headed back to Reykjavik in the tourist bus after a last lecture from Mike Neufeld of the Smithsonian. Lunch was at a hotel when we were in the city. We checked in at the 1919 Hotel in the historic district. There were tours of the new performing arts center and of the Northern Lights Center offered, but Judy and I opted to walk around on our own. The hotel was near the waterfront, so we walked uphill to the cathedral, stopping at every clothing store on the way looking for a particular kind of sweater. The cathedral is very modern, very tall and at the top of the hill.


Guardian of the Sweaters

The Cathedral is modern like much Scandinavian architecture and design.

Lief Erickson guards the Cathedral.

Cathedral organ. I'd love to hear it in action.

Cathedral Nave.

After a peek at the inside, we walked down hill toward the lake in the center of the city, City Hall was built in the lake. I should mention that the city is on the southwest coast of Iceland tucked into the upper corner of the Keflavik peninsula. It rained off-and-on during the walk. We found ourselves in the upscale embassy district with prosperous looking houses.


The siding and roof are of corrugated metal.

Slate roof and stucco walls are unusual.

A landmark in the city. The only onion dome we saw. It's a private house.

These row houses have metal roofs, skylights, and very typical windows, as you can see from some of the other houses.

The lake was full of water birds, all quite tame.


Lake, City Hall and waterfowl.

Black-headed gull, non-breeding phase.

Graylag goose shaking off the rain. Check ou the serrated, tooth-like beak.

Mallards, above and below.


We continued downhill to the harbor. There were coast guard boats, giant cruise ships, big cruise ships, fishing boats and small boats offering whale watching, puffin watching, orca watching, northern lights watching and the big, green glass arts center. The coastguard is the only military force on Iceland.


That green box behind the ships is the arts center. There are construction cranes everywhere.

The rocks show that there is a big tidal excursion.

Watching options.

The farewell dinner was at Apotek Restaurant. It lasted hours and we were offered small tastes of traditional food, some of it raw, including whale, puffin, cod, lamb, salmon, but not horse. We staggered back to the hotel.