Just Blogging in the Rain.

9-13-13 VERMONT: We came up a few days ago just before it started raining. It was 97° when we left NJ and still in the nineties here when we arrived. The first night we had a dramatic series of T-storms with enough wind gusts and bursts to fill the yard with branches and to knock trees down on our road both to the south and north of us. We didn’t know we were trapped because the roads were clear by the time we went out the next morning.

The power went out in the early evening, and the generator went out during the night. The old house furnace fan went on even though it was still hot—electric surge from lightning? The phones, too, were out. By the next afternoon the furnace and generator were both serviced, just in time for the next rainstorm. The rain was supposed to end this morning, but at 5 PM it’s still coming down.

We have had lots of sympathetic notes and emails from friends about Nick, including an entry on the Newark Beth Israel Medical Center Facebook Page with many sweet comments. https://www.facebook.com/NewarkBethIsraelMedicalCenter
We thank everyone for their kind words and thoughts.

Friend Katie brought us Forget-Me-Nots and Nodding Ladies Tresses in honor of Nick, and a beautiful note. I'll plant them tomorrow.

New blooms: chrysanthemum, boltonia, more asters.


Bottle Gentian, shockingly purple, were used in colonial times as a source of dye. These are the flowers not the buds, they don't open up any more than they are now. How do they get pollinated?

Turtle Head looks like a turtle head.

Autumn Sedum.

Aster.