Cold Turkey.

1-5-10 SHORT HILLS: We came south to NJ on the second, driving in snow and slush that dried up as we got into CT. The weather here has been almost as forbidding as VT, cold and windy with an inch or so of crusty snow cover.


We saw the turkey flock again as we were leaving. I am guessing they’re still all there, about fifteen birds.


The pocketful of live oak acorns I brought back from CA has surprised us. I threw them in a flower pot after the November visit to San José, watered them weekly and, four of them, so far, have germinated. The leaves have thorny points like holly tree leaves, but the leaf shape is more like a deciduous red oak. A quick visit to Wikipedia shows that there are 400 or so species in the oak tree genus, Quercus, and dozens that are evergreen [live] oaks. I think this one is California [or Coast] live oak, Quercus agrifolia. Can it over-winter in NJ, zone 6, but becoming zone 7? If the seedlings survive, I’ll move one or two outside in the fall and keep the others in the pot for another year.