Alligators and Vultures.

4-10-17 SHORT HILLS: We got back from Naples yesterday afternoon in time to pick up the dogs, who were incredibly glad to see us even though we had only been away for about 48 hours. Today’s weather here is as nice as Naples was yesterday.

Before we left Naples we all went to the Bird Rookery Swamp Management Unit. [Hopefully, they can come up with a better name.] It’s northeast of Naples in what is usually a swamp, but the rainfall in south Florida has been so scant that the swamp is drying up. There are small, shallow ponds remaining, and the critters congregate at those spots. The twelve mile trail makes a big loop. We did about a mile and half in and back out.

Black vultures were circling overhead almost continuously, two or three dozen and several were clustered around the water holes. There were several Immature white ibises, anhingas, double-crested cormorants, black snakes in the water and on land. And we saw alligators, one mom with about six babies that we saw and one solitary gator. Bald cypress with many knees predominate where we were walking. Unidentified butterflies were admired.


Double-crested cormorant.

Black vultures ominously circling.

Those cypress trees should be 'knee' deep in water.

Immature white ibises and a black vulture.

Momma gator warning us away from....

The kiddies.

Another gator catchin' some rays.

Snake doing laps.

Viceroy butterfly, who did get ID'd, can be confused for a Monarch.

Black vulture.

Naples, Birds and Flowers.

4-8-17 NAPLES, FLORIDA: We arrived yesterday afternoon, and Ken picked us up from RSW, and we drove down to Naples to the new condo on the beach. The views of the Gulf shoreline are spectacular from every room of the condo. We took a long walk, and went to dinner when Carol got home and then hit the sack early.

Today we went to the farmers market in the morning, bought lunch, ate it back at the condo, and later went to the Naples Botanical Garden. We had been there years ago when it was just getting started, and all the plants were less than two feet tall. Now it’s a treat for the eye from one end to the other. There’s a lake with water birds, a children’s garden with a butterfly habitat, an Asian garden, a Brazilian garden, waterfalls, ponds with water lilies and other aquatics, one interesting tree after another, and an orchid garden with hundreds of dazzling flowers.

Dinner was at the yacht club with old friends Henri and Riitta, a seafood buffet, which left us all stuffed.

Spectacular orchids at the Naples Botanical Garden.

Farmer market, Saturday morning, produce etc.

Willet working the surf.

Naples Botanical Garden, this might be called 'shaving brush'.

Tricolor Heron.

Another orchid...

and another....

and another orchid.

Flyers and Flights.

4-6-17 SHORT HILLS: It’s another rainy day, a bit o n the chilly side also. Yesterday was sunny, and we did a long dog walk and a little yard work.

The feeders have been very busy with all the usual customers. I saw one goldfinch, who has gone to his summer wardrobe already, but his siblings and cousins are still in their winter gray. I sat on the porch for a while this morning and caught some of the birds. It’s hard to get one in focus and snap the shutter before the subject twitches or flits.

Naples [FL] tomorrow.


Downy woodpecker, female.

Blue jay, tight squeeze.

Red-bellied woodpecker, female, even tighter access.

Nuthatch.

Tufted titmouse with sunflower seed. above and below...

Philly and Newark and Rain.

4-4-17 SHORT HILLS: We have had April showers aplenty. We were behind on yearly precip, but now must be almost caught up, Friday and Monday both gave us a few inches. The snow piles are almost gone, the remaining amount would just fill an ice tray.

Saturday we went to Philly to see old friends Stephen and Bob and Christine. Steve took us to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for an exhibition of watercolors featuring Homer and Sargent and and others, before and after. No museum visit is complete without our inspecting their Impressionist collection. Later Bob and Christine joined us for dinner at Twenty Manning Grill, good food, but too noisy for geezers.

Sunday we did a dog walk with friends Bebe, Ron, Annie, Gus, Maizie and Bally in the afternoon, and in the evening we went to NJPAC for the Munich Philharmonic. We heard Don Juan by Richard Strauss, Piano Concerto for the Left Hand by Maurice Ravel performed by pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard and after intermission, Eroica by Beethoven. Valery Gergiev conducted. The audience loved all three pieces.

Meanwhile back in the yard, I have been doing chores and watching for recovery from damage brought on by the early warmth and injurious later freeze. The butterfly bush from last season looks dead, it had started to open early. The same thing happened to two others last spring. All the spirea, about a dozen of them, are late.

New blooms: pachysandra, spicebush, pussy willow.


The special exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Selected Impressionist works from the PMA.....







The Munich Philharmonic at NJPAC before the appearance of Conductor Valery Gergiev and Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard.

Loss of Yellow.

3-31-17 SHORT HILLS: We came back to NJ in the rain on Monday, and today it’s raining again. I did get some work done on a couple of dry days this week. Wednesday I went around the yard cleaning up from the snowstorm. There were many broken branches scattered on the shrubs, some pretty big. The snow is gone except for the plowed piles in the driveway.

Yesterday the wind was very light, and I did the spring fertilizing. I used almost three 35-pound bags of HollyTone for the acidophiles like azaleas, hollies, rhododendrons and dogwoods. For the rest of the shrubs, trees and bulbs, I used generic 10-10-10 fertilizer, three 40-pound bags. In May I do a second round of feeding just for things that still look hungry.

Forsythia and daffodils have sustained damage from the late snowstorm and freeze. Both of those and other early spring bloomers will not put on much of a show this year. The fault lies not with the storm, which isn’t unusual in March, but with the warm February that led those plants astray. [I didn’t say that they were led down the garden path.] Not to belabor the point too much, I hope, but this is an example of harm brought on by climate change.

New blooms: Siberian squill.


Mr. and Ms. H. Finch considering the neighborhood and the apple tree on a rainy morning.

'I wonder where the yellow went.' That's a line from an old toothpaste ad that now applies to the forsythia.

The brown buds are dead.

This daffodil should have all upright stalks, not this floppy mess. There are a couple flower buds that may open, but this cluster usually has a dozen flowers.

Sugar Time.

3-26-17 VERMONT: Today is warmer, in the forties, mostly sunny and with little wind. I did a walk with the pooches around the pasture. The snow is crusty enough so I didn’t need snow shoes. The cover in some places is only a few inches thick.

Our neighbors, Steve and Diana, have sap buckets on every sugar maple in the pasture and along the road. You need a lot of sap, 40 gallons, to make one gallon of syrup. They should be boiling in the sugar shack soon.


If Gus, on the right, looks a little funny, he has three tennis balls in his mouth. Could you do that?

Sap buckets and....

Muddy road mean spring must be on the way.

Come Back, Spring, Come Back.

3-24-17 VERMONT: If you thought spring was here just because spring is here—not so fast. We woke up this morning to heavy snow, about four inches so far. Yesterday it was sunny when we got here, but it felt colder than the low thirties because of the wind. The day before, in NJ, the wind was gusting to forty knots, and broken branches were raining down from the clear sky.

This wintry weather would be OK if we hadn’t had that summery February that got all the plants awakened from dormancy too early. I’m ready for some warm days.


This starling is hanging on to the suet feeder in the high wind. You can see how much everything was dancing around in the background. This shot is from two days ago in NJ.

Today. Spring is here!

Only four inches so far.

We're off to buy provisions.