Happy Birthday.

10-22-26 SHORT HILLS: Closing in on Halloween, and election day, we have both been doing the stuff that fills our time, doctor visits and procedures, and for Judy, pet therapy visits. Judy spent almost three hours in Newark at the courthouse earlier this week with Blanca. 

We are enjoying a spell of dry weather, a string of sunny days with warm afternoons and cool nights. The big, big event of late was Emmett’s birthday party. He’s now three. Anna and Gardner hosted many kids and their parents for balloons, a party singer, a bounce house, and, of course, pizza and birthday cake. I’m sure it was the talk of the West Village for days.   

Fall color is developing nicely here, a few sugar maples in the neighborhood have vivid orange. The green leaves of summer are slowly surrendering their chlorophyll, storing the magnesium for the next season, in response to the loss of daylight and cooling temperatures. The pigments already in the leaf,  anthrocyanins [red, purple], carotenes [orange, yellow] are unmasked by the the withdraw of the chlorophyll and the chance to show their true colors. The functions of the fall colors are not established, but can be appreciated nontheless.

New blooms: witch hazel.

Pumpkins and gourds at Anna and Gardner's.

Listen to the music, wear the balloons.

It's a big back yard.

And a bounce house.

Leaf Season.

10-12-26 VERMONT: The visitors have come and gone. Lily and Danna arrived Thursday night, followed by Alison and Dan on Friday afternoon and on Saturday Dara, Kiala, and Luis, Danna’s cousins, appeared while the rest of us were at Cloudland Farm for an exquisite dinner. The assembled crowd was here for the leaves, and the leaves put on a show.

Our pasture and yard were pretty good, and got better over the weekend. Judy and I went north to the Kingdom, to Peacham, Danville and Cabot and a bunch of other small villages. We saw color, lakes and ponds, farms and stores and had little traffic and took lots of pix. The others went to the Norwich Farmers Market and King Arthurs, and climbed Gile Mt. They saw a lot of color also. 

Sunday we all went to the Bent Hill Brewery for lunch and a sample of the brews, and, of course, the color. Sunday night the guests made dinner, roasted chicken and lots of veggies and did the clean up. Monday all the guests left and Judy and I got back to winterizing. We will do more clean up and put away tomorrow and then leave Wednesday.   

Cloudland Farm.

Sunday dinner--from Left to Right--Danna, Dara, Lily, Howie, Judy, Blanca, Blue, Alison, Kiala, luis, and Dan.

A new coat of paint.

Mowed fields and color.

Horses enjoying the leaf color.

Color at Bent Hill.

Colorful hillside.

Color in our yard.

Frosty Morning.

10-7-26 VERMONT: Yesterday’s arrival was on a sunny day, a little cooler than NJ. We unpacked the car, and put the heat on in the houses. The new furnace didn’t work. We called the installers, and they got back to us and sent a serviceman, who fixed it. 

I started a fire and the room went from fifties to the sixties. Outside the temp dropped into the forties and then the thirties. This morning there were scattered patches of frost in the yard.

The painters had finished the house on Monday, it looks great, and one of them came by this morning to pick up the final check. He said they both loved the house and gardens. They’ll be back to do some interior work this winter. They saw an barred owl in the pine tree behind the pond.

Two sets of storm doors are out for repair. With Scott’s help, I put three of eight storm doors in. Scott will be back on Friday to do more of the winterizing.

We had a full rain gauge, which means at least two inches of rain, maybe more, and the upper pond is closer to being full.

We visited Cousin John at DHMC this morning, and had dinner at Red Can tonight.

In Bloom: asters, sedum, fall anemone, cimicfuga.  

Asters in red, pollinators are still active.

Asters in Purple.

Small asters. Notice that the centers are of two different colors. The yellow centers are being pollinated, but turn purple after pollination as an indication of pollinated status for the bugs, buit still contribute to the mass effect to draw the pollinators.

Cimicfuga looks lioke a bottle brush. It is sometimes killed by frost before blooming.

Barred Owl, possibly using the owl box on the next tree.

Game cam pic, too big for a fox, a coyote pair I think, anyone?

This is a fox.

Pumpkin Quest.

10-5-26 SHORT HILLS: Saturday was gorgeous, warm for the date and sunny. Anna, Gardner and Emmett came out in the morning on a pumpkin quest. We all went to the Farm at Green Village, our favorite nursery. They have  acres of pumpkins—traditional orange from golf ball size to massive and other pumpkins in white [ghost], blue, green, red, pale orange, yellow, smooth or warty. The gourds are in all shapes and sizes and colors. Gardner creates a display on their stoop in the West Village of all the pumpkins and gourds. 

They bought three carts worth and loaded them in the back of their car, After feeding the koi in the pond, we went to Creekside Farms where some of us rode the tractor train, feed the farm animals and did more shopping. Judy bought key lime pies. Anna bought cookies and more. Emmett climbed on a huge wooden tractor in the playground.

There were hundreds of kids and parents at both stops. We had an impromptu picnic at Creekside.

Gardner, Anna and Emmett went back to NYC to create the stoop display.

After afternoon naps for us, Judy, Reggie and I went to Bruce’s home for an elaborate  dinner he prepared.  

A large selection, many choices.

Three carts full.

So many pumpkins.

Witch's brew.

The pond with koi.

Colored corn.

Train ride.

Pumpkin art.

The Storm is Over.

9-28-26 SHORT HILLS: The world did not end. The Nor-easter has mostly moved on to New England. We had rain, 1.75 inches of it, brisk winds some of the time, no thunder. There are a lot of leaves and twigs down, one dead branch came off a tree. For us it was a non-event. The air is perfectly still now. The sky is still gray. It’s about 60º.

Otherwise, the quince has given us a couple yellow fruits. The burning bushes are very red, but some haven’t colored at all yet. The new southern magnolia is covered in pink fruit, but the old one has only a few. These fruits are called poly-follicles. Each follicle will open and deliver a bright red seed.  

This row of burning bushes has alot of red, but others are all green.

A closer look.

Quince fruit. I don't know if it's ripe or not.

Southern magnolia fruit are turning pink. Each of those diamond shaped follicles will open down the middle to expose a red seed and then release it.

This fruit shows some open follicles at the top, an open follicle at the bottom with a seed still in place, a follicle near the top is starting to open and the seed is visible.

Finches are back at the feeders.

Big Storm Predicted.

9-25-26 SHORT HILLS: We are waiting for the Nor’easter coming up the coast. It’s south of us, around DC now. The weather people are calling for Gloom and Doom—we’ll see. We did get 0.4 inches of rain a few days ago.  The wind has been from the northeast for a few days. Yesterday I was watching the clouds from the porch, where I was resting after filling the feeders. It doesn’t take much to get me tired now. Anyway, the clouds were moving southwest pretty quickly pushed by the northeast wind, but I noticed that much higher clouds, thinner and wispier, were moving north at a slower rate. 

Years ago when I was up in a balloon, the honcho said that the wind is often moving in different directions at different altitudes. So ballooners can go higher or lower to change direction.

They’re talking about heavy rain and high winds, flooding, trees down, high surf. There is a full moon, so tides will be higher. We are on the west side of the Orange Mountains, so the Nor’easters are blunted by the mountains.

I’ll issue a bulletin from within the storm if it happens.  

Pink sky and red burning bushes waiting for the storm.

Red finches on the feeders, I thought the one on the right was a pine siskin at first, but Merlin says no.

Equinox Arrives.

9-18-26 SHORT HILLS: There’s been plenty of rain. We had 2 inches a few days ago and more tonight, maybe. 

I took all the cuttings, snippings, prunings, choppings, weedings to the dump a few days ago, and Judy took some more the next day. We are catching up with a summer’s growth. The gardeners cut down lots of the bamboo in the back yard and took it away. We are going to ask them to remove the rest of the bamboo by the solarium. I still have clean up to do there also.  

Lily and Danna are visiting tomorrow, and we have dinner with Alan and Nancy tomorrow night. Judy has been doing her dog therapy visits. 

The Autumnal Equinox arrives in a couple of days to officially mark the end of summer.

Nice sky near the Millburn Library.