Transitions.

9-25-12 SHORT HILLS: It’s a catch up day. Judy said there were pix from Italy that I should have posted, so I’ll catch up with those and then catch up with the garden. First the pix:


Dazzled customer tries to choose.

Gnarly old olive tree, later we saw some far older.

Andria, a swallowtail butterfly on a butterfly bush, of course.

Trani cathedral frescoes.

That prominent limestone formation has a grotto enlarged to serve as a church for the 8th century Materans.

Church from the inside.

Frescoes from 11th century.

Another grotto-church, behind the first.

Frescoes in the second church.

Back in the yard: the dying oak tree is gone, stump and all. Frank’s Tree took it down using a huge crane to carry big pieces from the back yard to the driveway where the chipper was set up. The crane lifted big limbs over the house and set them down on the lip of the chipper. Everything was chipped but the main trunk.

They next lifted the stump grinder, a giant circular saw that moves on tracks like a bulldozer, and set it down in the yard because it was too wide for the gate. It ate up the stump in about an hour, down to a foot below grade. They took the chips away except for enough to fill the hole and then lifted the grinder back out. In half a day, a one hundred year old tree was gone, turned into sawdust.

Yesterday I topped off the hole with soil and seeded the area.

Wilpat was also here before we left and identified two leaks in the sprinkler system, one in the pipe to the pool water supply line and one in the seventh watering zone. That last was caused by roots of a big ash tree. They made repairs, and now we have only one other issue with the system, weak pressure in zone three.

While we were away, there was a storm that dumped a bunch of branches in the yard and 0.75 inches of rain. They day we returned, there was a T-storm that left another 0.5 inches.