Run for the Roses

5-5-06 VERMONT: Another pretty day in the 70’s. I finished the sunflower bed adding some sand and ox poop to the bed to improve drainage and fertility. I am undecided about covering it. I built a wall on the road side of the culvert to keep the lower end from filling with sand. It will probably need to be extended. Next the roses got pruned and weeded. After dinner, I sprayed more tent caterpillars. Then I put in new water filters.

New blooms: forget-me-not, double blood root, service berry, dandelion and wild ginger. The ginger may have been out, I just remembered to look.

I watched a newt eat frog eggs in the big pond, possibly that explains the lack of tadpoles.

The fish are back.

5-4-06 VERMONT: A beautiful day marred only by black flies. It did get a bit breezy which blows them away. I got the veggie garden set up, raked stones out, laid the black plastic cloth that prevents weed growth and warms the soil, put up the three wire electric fence to keep horses, oxen and small mammals out, hauled away three loads of rocks that came up with the roto-tilling. Then I started on the sunflower bed and did a bunch of small jobs. I sprayed two tent caterpillar nests in apple trees. The elm trees look fine as do most of the apple trees that the oxen ate.

New blooms: blood root and vinca minor.

Wild life: we saw a turkey near the house on our way into town for dinner and two deer on the way home. The fish appeared today for a first sighting. The pond is now teeming with them and the newts, no crayfish or turtles as yet. I saw two dead spotted salamanders around the pond.

Cut the Mustard

5-3-06 VERMONT: We had a nice trip up in the rain which started in New Haven. There was one inch in the gauge when we arrived in Thetford. Since it was afternoon, I did a bit of pruning and put out plant supports for peony, delphinium and bluet. Usually I struggle to do this when they are grown. This was much easier.

A certain Golden Retriever spent a half hour barking at a floating leaf about four feet out in the pond. I won’t mention his name. The leaf was indifferent to the challenge. The pack did have a minor scuffle with a woodchuck who lives under the small barn. No one reported any injuries.

In bloom: daffodil, violet, primrose, red trillium, pachysandra, wild strawberry, forsythia and star magnolia.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear, I am not now nor have I ever been a friend of the weed known as wild garlic mustard, except, perhaps, for experiences in and around the refrigerator with isonomic. I spent at least two hours weeding in Short Hills, and none remains in our yard to the best of my knowledge. I feel it is an important public service to document its behavior. Rutgers Aggies report that it is on the increase in NJ, but seems harmless.

Wildlife: a zillion tadpoles in the small pond, and the frog opera has opened to strong reviews. Many newts in the big pond. Woodchuck as noted above.

See like a Bee.

Pure Perfume

My weight loss program

5-2-06 SHORT HILLS: More chopping and another load to the dump. There is still more yard to go, yards of yard. Today started overcast and ended sunny. We are again ready for rain. I started the sprinklers yesterday. Vermont tomorrow.

New blooms: another type of viburnum, more azalea.

Clarification: the grape vine pulled yesterday was the nasty, parasitic thing that devours trees.

Pix: can you smell this snowball viburnum? Azalea to the bee.

Saw, Clip, Cut, Snip

5-2-06 SHORT HILLS: I took out about two Subaru loads of dead shrubs, mostly spicebush, from the Westview side of the yard. Then I took out old forsythia canes, dug up a grape vine, pulled out loads of garlic mustard, fertilized evergreens with HollyTone for the May application. Judy helped load up the cars for a dump run tomorrow.

New blooms: May apple, leucothoe.