Beethoven before Vermont.

5-4-17 VERMONT: We drove up today in sunshine that has disappeared as the sky became overcast. Rain tomorrow, I think. Since I was last here, everything is showing itself, except for the late sleepers. For some plants you have to wait until June before giving up and pronouncing them dead.

We walked around the yard and pasture with the dogs, and I took pix of the new flowers and surveyed what’s alive so far. The pond flood from the last Vermont posts may have killed some pond-side flowers, again, too soon to say. Maples, birches, elms and willows are showing early leaves.

Last night we were at Lincoln Center, Geffen Hall, for the NY Philharmonic. They did Beethoven’s Ninth, The Choral Symphony in D minor, a favorite of everyone including the audience last night. I have to note that there was applause between the first and second movements and between the second and third movements, not done, people, save it for the end. We are used to that from the concert-goers in NJ at NJPAC, but never in NYC. The Ninth was preceded by Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, Op. 46. The Westminster Symphonic Choir accompanied the orchestra and the four soloists.

New blooms, in NJ since 5-2: wild strawberry, white spirea.

New blooms, VT: pulmonaria, wild ginger, vinca minor, daffodil, hepatica, pachysandra, blood root, forsythia, English primrose, red trillium.


This cluster of daffodils has more flowers than our entire yard in NJ did this spring because of the early warmth and later freeze.

English primrose. P. vulgaris, is an early bloomer ,while the Japanese primroses are just showing their first leaves.

Blood root is an early and short-lived bloom. the leaves above and below are unusual.

Double blood root. The roots have red sap, hence the name.

The ground-hugging flower of wild ginger must attract some pollinator, but who? Worms? Ants? Beetles?

The whole ginger plant.