Summer is here.

5-5-15 SHORT HILLS: The last two days have been in the eighties, summer is here in the middle of spring. Things are drying out and the sprinklers are on for watering at night—always the best time to water, less loss to evaporation.

The trees are all showing leaves, and the view from the upstairs windows is not the bare branches of winter but foliated trees. Flowers are popping out everywhere.

New blooms: dogwood, Kwansan cherry, crab apple, quince, redbud, blueberry, barberry, first viburnum, mertensia, sweet woodruff, yellow lamium, purple lamium, wild mustard.


Quince, usually the flowers are red, this a recent hybrid. The flowers form in the center of the plant not on the periphery.

Kwansan cherry, if you're into pink.

Dogwood, a very red flower, usual color is white or pink.

Virginia blue bells, Mertensia virginica, a woodland ephemera.

Viburnum, our first to open, very fragrant - Chinese snowball viburnum.

Crab apple.