Mud Season.

3-19-11 VERMONT: Yesterday was even warmer, and I went skiing. The snow was soft, of course, but the warm, pleasant day had other skiers in t-shirts. There was a lot of thawing and melting, our snow pack is down maybe five inches. The snow that I walked on top of a few days back is now mush. Even with snowshoes, it is a slog getting around the pasture. The dogs were breaking through every other step and then used my snowshoe tracks.

The road was barely passable yesterday. The roads are messy, muddy, ridged, rutted, pot-holed and puddled. Last night was cold again and things stiffened up. The ruts are axle deep in wet spots. The town grader was here yesterday, but all he did was push the mud around. Any benefit was lost with the first car to go by. The art of driving means picking the driest spots and zig-zagging right or left to try and stay on top of the ridges. When you slide into the ruts, just keep going and hope the AWD gets you through. Fortunately the traffic is very light, only local folks dare these roads now.


Signs of Spring: Sap Buckets and Mud.

Muddy Ruts and Ridges.

The Third Rail Reappears.

The Wearin' o' the White.

3-17-11 VERMONT: It’s St. Pat’s Day, but Vermont is wearing the white not the green. I came up yesterday and saw patches of snow in CT, sparse cover in MA, but in VT—lots of snow. There’s so much snow on the ground that half of our garage is inaccessible. The plow piles and piles under the eaves are huge, but there’s 18 inches of snow around the house and covering the pasture.

Sam, Chloe and I walked around this morning staying on top of the frozen snow. I broke through a couple of times and was in up to my knee each time. That’s an excellent technique for getting a boot full of snow. The taps and buckets are out on all the sugar maples. Across the road they were boiling yesterday. It smelled like wood-smoke and syrup.

It’s warm, 50’s, and sunny today, and I cleared some of the snow from the deck. In addition to the accumulation of fallen snow, the deck catches the snow falling off the east side of the roof. The snow, falling two stories, lands with a house-shaking thud and gets compacted and heavy. I cut it into two foot square chunks and slide them off the deck through gates in the railing put there for that purpose.


Deck with snow, open gate.


Plenty of snow above and below that wall. The bell post is three feet tall.

No room on this park bench.

If the buckets are out, it must be March.

J. C., Beware the Ides!

3-14-11 SHORT HILLS: The last patch of snow was down to an ice cube yesterday, a wet spot this morning and is now dried up. A month ago I couldn’t see over the top of the pile. It’s a metaphor for the housing market, investment portfolios or your own favorite disaster. Speaking of disasters, lots of houses in NJ are still underwater, and flooding problems persist, too.

Today was cold, overcast, gusty and uncomfortable—March. Actually there were a few flakes in the air this morning. Yesterday was a bit more pleasant, and I moved a few small plants around. Judy would say, “Re-accessorizing.” I moved a Star-of-Bethlehem out of the lawn area to a bed, I put some Rose-of-Sharon shoots and a small blueberry into the damaged area. Vermont later this week.

New blooms: lots more crocus.

Time to Build an Ark.

3-11-11 SHORT HILLS: Yesterday we had another soaker that dumped another 2.25 inches of rain. That totals to 4.8 inches—more than 10% of our yearly predicted rainfall in one week. Needless to say, the yard is a quagmire again. The temperature got into the fifties today and the snow piles are now just little patches. All over the state and the Northeast there are flooded towns.

On the ninth I bought two Japanese flowering cherry trees, Prunus serrulata ‘kwanzan’, at Home Depot and planted them today in the area where we lost the spruces. The loss of the spruce trees, which were huge, has given us s patch of sunlight that I will fill with small flowering trees, perhaps six. There are already colonizers there, ash tree shoots, viburnum, spice bushes, burning bushes which will take off as will three English holly volunteers, forsythia and hemlock and Douglas fir and rhododendrons, leucothoe and a large boxwood. After the plantings, I finished the Holly-Tone fertilizing of the acidophilic shrubs.

The forsythia canes and buds are getting yellowish and wild strawberry leaves and claytonia shoots are poking up out of the soggy ground.

New blooms: crocus.


Crocus slowly cracking a smile.

The Flower Stampede Begins.

3-8-11 SHORT HILLS: We did get a big rain, 2.55 inches. The sump pump was very busy, but the basement stayed dry. The temps were in the fifties during the rain, and so the snow piles have dwindled considerably.

Yesterday was cooler, and the yard was a quagmire after the rain so I did clean-up and pruning around the driveway, accumulating enough for a dump run with the debris.

Today I was back in the yard doing more pruning and made two trips to the dump with bamboo, boxwood, rhododendron and juniper winter kill. I oiled and adjusted gates and fertilized more rising spring bulbs.

New blooms: spring snowflake, crocus [almost].


Spring Snowflake, Lercojum vernum, is related to the Snowdrop, Galanthus, both are in the Amaryllis family. This one has six petals instead of three and each one is adorned with a green-yellow dot. Look back a few days for pix of Snowdrops.

Early Crocus is threatening. Sometimes I think I like them better in the bud stage.

Apps for the Yard.

3-5-11 SHORT HILLS: Yesterday was in the thirties with a sharp breeze, but sunny. I spread lime, Ca and Mg Carbonate—just like OsCal and Tums, but cheaper by the big bag. I put 80 pounds on what passes for lawn. Then I did the Holly-Tone to all the acidophilic plants, over 100 pounds, but came up a bit short. After four hours, I came in with cold hands and feet.

Today, sixties and partly sunny, feels like, what’s that word—oh yeah, Spring. I did fertilizing of the non-acidophilic shrubs and plants, so far using about 50 pounds of generic 10-10-10. By mid-afternoon today, viburnum buds were getting green. I did more clean-up of dead fall in trees and shrubs and starting pruning winter kill. Heavy rain predicted for tomorrow should help all the fertilizer and lime soak in. I put out the rain gauge.

Little by little the shrubs around the driveway are freeing themselves from the icy grip of the plow piles. There are lots of broken branches, but the shrubs will probably end up fine.


Snowdrop. That yellow-green ball in the center is what becomes the new bulb.

Snowdrops are popping up all over the yard.

The Trees Know What Time It Is.

3-2-11 SHORT HILLS: We are 99% snow free, not counting the piles in the driveway. It took a couple warmish days and some rain. Now we have mud and sticks. All those wind storms left the yard covered with sticks, branches, limbs, twigs and wood chips and chunks where the spruce trees came down. Today started out as sunny, but is now overcast and windy with a freeze predicted for tonight.

I counted rings on the spruce stumps. The smaller one, 18 inches in diameter, had about 75 rings. The larger stump was almost three feet in diameter. The rings were harder to read because the stump was split in several places, all opposite from the wind direction, but there were probably not a whole lot more than about 80 rings. The center 3 inches was rotted. The outer most rings were a half inch in thickness.

I have started clean-up, pulling broken branches out of the shrubs and breaking up the big pieces for mulch.

The tops of the elm tree, birches and maples are showing a little orange or reddish color and the buds are swelling. Daffodil and crocus shoots are visible.

New blooms: more snowdrops.


The top of a red maple, the red doesn't show, but the buds are busy.

The top of our elm, seen through other trees, those fat blobs are the elm buds. They'll be open a week.