Big, Big Birthday Dinner.

7-14-11 SHORT HILLS: We arrived here mid-afternoon yesterday. A quick walk around the yard showed the new plantings mostly fine, tons of weeds, deer damage to the vacationing-outside hibiscuses, lilac, a small pear tree and hostas [that might be woodchucks]. The California live oak seedlings have vanished, their site is full of vole holes.

I did some weeding yesterday and again the morning. I had brought a bucket full of variegated bishops weed down from VT and planted them this morning. I put some between the magnolia and apple in the back yard and the rest in spots under the rose-of-Sharon/viburnum cluster. Later I pulled up hundreds of small grape vines and several large ones.

Wild grape vines are all over the yard. Birds eat the wild grapes from the neighborhood and return to our yard, where many nest because it is semi-wooded, and a day later, poop out the grape seeds in a little dab of fertilizer. I pulled up 58, by actual count, grape seedlings under one bunch of tall junipers.

Big dinner tonight for Judy’s ## Birthday. It’s a round number, but I daren’t say what. We have a table for eight at the Gotham Bar & Grill.

In bloom: rose-of-Sharon, rhododendron, lamium, spirea, roses, hydrangea.


Rose-of-Sharon. A mid-summer bloomer related to hibiscus.

Hydrangea.

Another Hydrangea.

And One More Hydrangea.