A Break in the Rain.

5-29-14 VERMONT: Yesterday and this morning were cold and rainy, but it cleared nicely about noon today, and everything dried out. In the afternoon I string-trimmered all the paths and patios, raked up the trimmings, and did a bunch of weeding. Before that, I moved a few bleeding heart volunteers into the original bleeding heart bed which was partly empty.

Before the rain, two days ago, I bought and planted in the herb bed new oregano and thyme, perennial varieties, and rosemary and chives. I added three Sun Gold tomatoes to the veggie bed.

New blooms: celandine, bunchberry, blueberry.


Common spring perennial.

Apple tree with a non-blooming stripe.

Forget-me-not and bleeding heart sheltering under the apple.

Back to VT.

5-26-14 VERMONT: There was no traffic this morning, and I made good time. It’s warm here but with a few sprinkles this afternoon.

I planted the basil and parsley that I brought up. The thyme and oregano didn’t survive the winter, but the tarragon and chives did. In the veggie bed, I also planted the corn and the tomatoes that I had, some grown from seed and some bought.

In bloom: apple, quince, lilac, Mohican viburnum, lamium, dandelion, forget-me-not, violet, bleeding heart, epimedium, ajuga, wild strawberry, spurge, hellebore, jack-in-the-pulpit, Virginia blue bells, pulmonaria, trillium, vinca, geranium.


Trillium has three petals, bracts and leaves. It also does red and pink.

The bleeding hearts are everywhere, except the original bed.

They also come in white.

A New House on Our Block.

5-25-14 SHORT HILLS: Today was beautiful, a perfect summer day. We had over two inches of rain during the previous three days, enough to wet the basement floor and get the sump pump running.

Yesterday afternoon we went to Brooklyn Heights to see Maggie, just back from her first year of college. We all did a walk along the new waterfront. NYC has re-purposed the abandoned piers for recreation and parks. There are facilities for every sport, for BBQ, a pool, a sandy beach, kiddie playgrounds, ferry stations, nature and garden areas and bird habitat. It was filled with users. A hotel and condo units are under construction. It’s all comes with views of Liberty Island, Ellis Island, lower Manhattan and loads of river traffic.

A new house has gone up on our lot. Judy thought the new shrub bed that I made where the oak tree died needed a focus of interest. She bought a birdhouse that arrived while we were in Brooklyn. We went to Home Depot and got a post, some extra plants, and I painted the post, added a crown molding and today we mounted the house on the post and planted it amid the shrubs. I added two clematis vines at the base and put in a few more of the ‘White Nancy’ lamium.

New blooms: black chokeberry.


Brooklyn Heights beach, but no one's in the water.

A new eight unit condo on our block. The fence is to keep the dogs from digging it up.

Black Chokeberry with friend.

More New Plantings [Second Post of the Day.]

5-22-14 SHORT HILLS: We’ve had a couple rainstorms, with a T-storm looming to the west on the radar. I have done more maintenance work—weeding and pruning and pulling vines off several shrubs. Part of the flagstone path had disappeared in the grass, so I lifted them up and reset them on top of the grass—an easy and quick solution. A few are a little wobbly, but they will settle back down.

I did more planting in the shrub bed that used to be the oak tree. It’s still a struggle with the dead oak roots. I made the bed a bit bigger and added a dwarf lilac, Syringa patula ‘Miss Kim’, and a spirea x vanhouttei, as well as twenty lamium, ten each of Lamium maculatum ‘White Nancy’, and Lamium galeobdolon ‘Jade Frost’. I added a bayberry, Myrica pensylvanica to the boggy bed.

Judy ordered a birdhouse to go in the center of the new bed.

New blooms: wild strawberry, star-of-Bethlehem, jack-in-the-pulpit, another rhododendron, weigela.


Star-of-Bethlehem, a six-pointed star with grass like leaves.

Another rhododendron.

Mama robin at work. I already put up a short video of this domesticity.

Robin's Nest at Dinner Time

Robin feeding chicks.

Newark and New York.

5-18-14 SHORT HILLS: We had a big rain in the middle of the week and lots of sun since. I’ve been doing some pruning and weeding and have a big load of cuttings for the dump.

Friday night we went to NJPAC in Newark for the Moscow Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra who are on a world tour. They are mostly all strings, but brought out two horn and two clarinets for a Boccherini symphony [No. 4 in D minor]. They also did pieces by Vivaldi, Rossini and Tchaikovsky. The audience, it being New Jersey, was filled with Russian immigrants who applauded enough to get four encores. Vladimir Spivakov is the conductor and violin soloist.

Saturday we went to NYC for Lady Day at Emerson’s, a tribute to Billie Holiday starring Audra McDonald, and I mean STARRING. She did an amazing job singing and acting. She sounded exactly like Billie Holiday does on the recordings that I have. I would say a sure bet for the Tony.

We found ourselves in a big street fair on Ninth Ave. walking from the parking lot to the restaurant, Chez Napoleon, a fav of ours. The fair had the usual gamut of cuisines from the four corners, clothes, linens, china, hair stuff, henna tats, crafts and you name it.

New blooms: jack-in-the-pulpit, lily-of-the-valley, Asian lilac, wild cherry.


Cardinal on her nest. She is next to the house and flies off when we go in or out.

Moscow Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra at NJPAC, Vladimir Spivakov conducting.

Ninth Ave street fair Saturday afternoon.

Choice of cuisines-Irish, Scottish, Italian, Polish on this block.

Theatre Marquee at Circle-in-the Square Theatre.

Lushness of May.

5-16-14 SHORT HILLS: I’ve been back in NJ for a couple days, a couple cloudy, rainy days, but the yard has the lush look of full spring. While not everything is fully open, when I look out the window, my sight lines are filled with green. Our neighbors’ houses mostly disappear behind foliage, and we only see patches of the streets.

The yard is full of flowers. I guess that the month of May has the most blooming plant species, even the grass looks pretty good.

New blooms: chestnut, mulberry, hawthorn, rhododendron, blueberry, deutzia, burning bush, lilac, honey suckle, Carolina allspice, kerria, leucothoe, several viburnums, columbine, wood hyacinth, ajuga, purple lamium, may apple.


Lurid azalea.

Rhododendron, the first of several.

Leucothoe flowers look similar to blueberry, andromeda and lily-of-the-valley.

Columbine, fancy variety.

Carolina allspice has an interesting flower and aroma.