Bees and Trees.

6-11-15 SHORT HILLS: I have been a busy bee since we’re back from Los Gatos. Among the chores—more pruning and trimming, I’m still finding dead branches, adjusted and oiled the yard gates, washed the skylights, put up two outdoor thermometers, changed the storm windows to the screens, weeding, took several carloads of prunings and weedings to the town dump and picked up compost there, filled holes, created by the canine friends, with the compost, replaced broken basement-window-well covers, and probably more.

Speaking of bees, I haven't seen any honey bees, but there are lots of bumble bees and other smaller kinds of bees.

We’re caught up on rain, we had more than four inches in about a week. Today is hot, hot, hot.

Julio from Frank’s Tree came to inspect a sick ash tree and determined that it has borers and will prune the dead wood and also prune the Japanese maple that is chocking itself to death with roots that are encircling the trunk. This can happen with stock grown in a container that doesn’t let the roots grow outward. The maple has been here longer than we have, must be sixty years old, and has looked better every year—until now.

These two sick trees are major players in this yard and added to nine other mature trees that we have lost in the past decade to storms or disease are balanced out by the same number of trees I have planted over the years that are now mature.

New blooms: red clematis, red and pink spireas, linden tree, sweet spire, elderberry.


Spirea are in bloom all over the neighborhood, in pinks and reds.

Sweet Spire a small shrub that tolerates shade and damp soil.

Elderberry reminds me of the viburnums, but blooms later.

Another clematis, this one in red. These flowers are not fully open.