We Play 'Pick-Up-Sticks.'

11-15-12 SHORT HILLS: Congrats to R. A. Dickey for the CYA, I expect the Mets to trade him any minute now.

We are back in seasonal weather, mild mid-November, means a jacket if you’re out at night. We have been out at night, having dinner with Alice and Irving last night and Bill and Lynn the night before and Bob and Christine coming up on the weekend. It’s not Tampa, of course, but it’s busy for us in NJ.

Judy and I started on the Sandy cleanup and delivered four carloads of branches to the dump today and will do another bunch tomorrow.


Is this what they mean by a Red State?

More redness.

Back to Mild Weather.

11-12-12 SHORT HILLS: Today the temperature is almost 70° and yesterday was also in the sixties—so much for the snow. Dense fog this morning burnt off quickly. There are a few flying insects darting around, presumably hatched after the storms. A few of the trees still have leaves, Japanese maple, beech, oak and dawn redwood. The redwood took a beating in the storms, branches are scattered around the yard.

We are all mightily relieved by the election results here in the blue states. Congrats to Nate Silver and the FiveThirtyEight blog for getting it all almost perfectly right and for the success of his book. I went to that site no more than once an hour during the campaign. Pollster at the HuffPo also did a great job. BMN, as per Jon Stewart, has been correctly re-named.

New blooms: witch-hazel, wild strawberry.


Witch-hazel has four sepals, four ribbon-like petals, four stamen around the stigma.

Witch-hazel clusters have a delicate aroma.

Snow.

11-8-12 SHORT HILLS: We actually got the six inches of snow they predicted, delivered with a big dose of wind. This morning the air was still and trees and shrubs were buried in the snow. By mid-morning the sun was out, it was in the forties and the driveway was plowed. I don’t think there was any new, major damage here. We never lost power, but others in town did, and many new outages are reported for the region.

Speaking personally, I’ve already had enough weather for the rest of the month.


Some folks are fine with the snow.

There's about six inches piled on everything. Can you find Chloë?

Bushes and branches are bent over, but not broken.

Now It's Snow, the Locusts are on Deck.

11-7-12 SHORT HILLS: Bizarre is the word for what the nor’easter is doing today. We have high wind, of course, and snow. Yes, I said snow, a couple inches so far. We were relatively lucky here to not have major tree damage in the hurricane last week. We did have many broken branches down, and some branches still hanging in the trees. Other parts of town lost trees, hundreds were brought down.

This storm, with snow and more wind, while some trees still have foliage up, will probably do what Sandy didn’t do to us. Did I say that it's freezing?

We‘ve had power since Sunday, friends just got power back today after a ten day outages, but what’re the chances of heavy, wet snow causing new outages—could that happen? I’m sure it’ll all be worse in the coastal towns that were ravaged by Sandy because they’re expecting another storm surge tonight.


Burning bush and chokecherry in the snow.

Fortunately this apple is leafless.

Another burning bush going from red to white.

NJ Update.

11-4-12 SHORT HILLS: As we drove down Great Hills Rd. on our arrival yesterday we could see the light at the top of the driveway was lit, telling us from a block away that our power was on. Inside, the phones, TVs, and Internet were working. Life restored to normal—for us, but many are still in the dark, and many others are homeless.

The clean up in town is progressing, but will take weeks. The town management gets credit for coping and the millburn.patch.com updates are excellent. The schools are still closed. We vote at an alternate site because Deerfield School has no power.

Would you believe another nor’easter this week, bad news for those in the coastal wreckage.

Back to NJ.

11-3-12 VERMONT: The Millburn/Short Hills web site says that power is on the way, and some of our neighbors already are up, so we will head back to NJ tomorrow. It’s getting colder here, seasonally so, and there may be a frost tonight.

The enormity of the damage caused by Sandy to the Jersey shore, Staten Island, and the Atlantic shore of Long Island is astounding and should be alarming to anyone living near sea level. It has to get worse as the sea level rises further, which is inevitable.

The bird feeders have been busy since we’re here. We have lots of chickadees, nuthatches, blue jays, downy woodpeckers, evening grosbeaks, mourning doves, rock doves and red squirrels.


"My little chickadee..." WCF.

Now Do You Get It?

In his news conference yesterday, Andrew Coumo, Governor of New York, pointed out that the storm of the century now occurs yearly. We have had three such in the last two years, Irene, Sandy and the Halloween storm of 2011. Since there is no global or national will to actually address Climate Change and since the global temperature will continue to increase for decades even if carbon emissions were capped, which they won't be, and since sea levels will continue to rise, NYC will need a levee system, and the barrier islands are in serious trouble if not doomed.