A Night at the Opera.

11-28-17 SHORT HILLS: The Pella Window team has been here for two days and all the new double-hung windows are in place. There is more outside finish work to be done tomorrow, and there are screens to be mounted. They guys have been very efficient dealing with removal of the old windows, new installations, lead remediation and good at cleaning up.


That's not Scrooge, that's Guiseppe Verdi.

We were in the city last night for a performance of Verdi’s Requiem. We had dinner at Café Fiorello as we often do, and when we came out of the restaurant there were huge crowds on Broadway, in Dante Park, between 9th Ave. and Broadway, and in Josie Robertson Plaza in the middle of Lincoln Center. It turned out that it was ‘The Winter’s Eve 2017’ celebration wherein the Xmas tree is lit and lots of street entertainment happens. Also, all the local restaurants have outdoor booths where they sell their signature dishes to the crowds. The biggest line was for cheeseburger sliders from P. J. Clarke’s for a buck each. I have performer pix below.

The Requiem was conducted by James Levine, now Musical Director Emeritus, and the soloists were from Latvia, Belarus, Bulgaria and Italy. I loved it. Judy and the NYT, not so much. It’s about an hour and a half long, so it’s an early trip home form the opera. There is a lot of dramatic music, and Hans von Bülow, the conductor and composer, disparaged the piece as an ‘opera in church clothes’. I’m not sure what the point of the criticism was.

Be there next year for a fun fete, and you don’t have to go to the opera.


Stilt walker strutting her stuff in Josie Robertson Plaza. She was part of the Alice Farley Dance Theater marching band.

Alicia Svigals' Klezmer Fiddle Express pumped it out under the freshly-lit Xmas tree.

Ascap Holiday Chorus singing on Broadway next to Café Fiorello.

The tree in Dante Park, a triangular sliver of space between Broadway and 9th Ave, Lincoln Center in the background.

The Metropolitan Opera House before the show.

Jamie Levine in silhouette on the poster for Verdi's Requiem.

Waiting to face the music.

The Opera Chorus, soloists and Chorus Master taking bows after all the octaves.

Thanksgiving Week.

11-26-17 SHORT HILLS: I know it’s been a long time since the last post, sorry dear reader. I had cataract surgery last Monday from which I am almost recovered. I missed the Thanksgiving Party at Lincoln School, but Judy took some pix, and a couple are below. Judy and Gus the golden go to Lincoln for the kids to read to Gus, the kids get better at reading and Gus gets dog treats.

The weather has been windy most days, and a rain of branches has fallen on the shrubs and lawn. Today was very windy when we went to cousin and friend Robert’s unveiling with his widow Barbara. It was nice to see all their family at their house after the ceremony.

Our Thanksgiving was the usual bacchanalia, interrupted only by a walk around the block with the dogs.

Yesterday and today we spent time taking down all the curtains and drapes and window coverings for Pella to install new windows starting tomorrow. We aroused a lot of dormant dust.


Winter sunset. The best color is still the burning bushes.

A few minutes later...

LBB's at the feeder, female house finches, I think.

Judy and Gus at the Lincoln Elementary School second grade Thanksgiving Party.

Gus with friends.

White, Red and Yellow.

11-17-17 SHORT HILLS: As the season winds down there’s less garden news to report. It has been cold, appropriate for November, with some rain and windy days. I spent a couple hours picking fallen branches off the shrubs and another bit of pruning.

Yesterday it was warmer in the afternoon, above 50°, so I painted the wrought iron patio furniture. I used exactly one quart of white Rustoleum.

We had Sunday night dinner at Bette and Lonnie’s. Thanks again, Bette. Tuesday night was a T-o-A dinner with Bill and Lynn.

Every year the forsythia show a few blooms in the fall. Typically, it happens after a cold snap and a subsequent warm-up. It doesn’t detract from the usual spring yellow glory.

New blooms: forsythia.


Nuthatch in classic pose, waiting a turn at the feeder.

Warm days after a cold snap fools a few forsythia buds into opening in the wrong season. It happens every year.

There's still red.

Painting the patio furniture took me all afternoon. I needed a day above 50° for the paint to dry.

Ice.

11-12-17 SHORT HILLS: I gave up on doing anything else outside in Vermont and came back to NJ. The pond was frozen over yesterday morning in Vermont when the temp was 12° and had possibly been lower overnight. I’m sure it will warm up again in a week or so.

Early November was unusually warm, and then mid-November gave us an Arctic blast. It’s apparent to me that Climate Change is marked by unpredictable and severe extremes. They say, ‘Climate is what you expect, and weather is what you get.’ That has never been truer, especially considering those intense hurricanes a few months ago.


The pond is frozen over after a night in the teens. I'm sure it will open up again when it warms up in a week or so.

Snow.

11-10-17 VERMONT: Fortunately I finished the garden beds yesterday because an arctic front came through during the night. Rain that preceded the front turned to snow when the temp fell into the twenties. The wind is blowing in the twenties with gusts much higher. We had one brief power outage earlier.

I’d like to clear the culvert, but the ‘feels like’ temp is 9°. The amount of snow is negligible, but it’s the first one of the year, more to come.

The hooded merganser was back on the pond this morning, oblivious to the cold and wind. I saw a pileated woodpecker several times this week working the apple trees along with the other birds.


The hooded merganser was back today in the wind, snow and cold. The surface of the pond has been shivering ion the wind.

'Winter is Coming.'

A dusting on the beds that I just cleaned out.

Not a day for rocking.

The wind is blowing like crazy.

Colder Nights.

11-8-17 VERMONT: I did the front of the houses, the west side beds, yesterday, and dumped three more cartloads of cuttings in the pasture. I dump those cuttings and prunings in holes and wet spots in the pasture in the hope that the organic matter will end up as soil filling the hole slightly. I have almost worked my way around the house. A couple more flowers still open include lamium and red clover.

Last night it was in the mid twenties, and today it’s in the low thirties—that’s November weather.

There was a hooded merganser on the pond for almost a full day including an over-night. She, or possibly and non-breeding male, did a lot of diving and frequently came up with something that took her a few minutes to swallow, perhaps a frog or crawfish. The pix from the first day, which was dark and rainy, were poor, but the next day provided better light and better pix.

Lots of birds, especially the robins, are hanging out in the apple trees fattening up on the crab apples. I guess they’re bulking up for the big commute.


Hooded merganser spent almost a whole day in the pond, frequently diving for food, crawfish?

Either it's a female or a non-breeding male.

The front of the house before clean-up.

A flock of a dozen robins have been in the apple trees gobbling up the little apples.

After the clean-up.

Another Rainy Day

11-6-17 VERMONT: It’s raining again today, so I’m inside for now. I have put in three days and cleaned up the beds on the east side of the house and am working on the beds on the north end and the terrace. I think there have been six cartloads of cuttings dumped in the pasture.

Brady left for home yesterday. I hope he’s back next summer, at thirty it’s iffy for a horse. I forgot to mention some other flowers still in bloom: geranium, feverfew, foxglove. The next several night are supposed to be in the twenties, so good frosts should make the rest of the perennials shut down.


This foxglove has been blooming all season. I hope it survives the winter.

The mowed pasture looks so clean. I'm always torn between keeping it looking tidy or enjoying the wild flower summer sequence.

The leaves are almost all down. The rain storm is clearing up.

Brady the horse in his raincoat. He has now moved back to his winter digs.

Here are some of those beds from the last post now cleaned up. There is still some green stuff, either perennials not yet dormant or biennials waiting for next spring like that foxglove by the second step. The clean up is not just chopping every thing down.

Vermont in the Rain.

11-3-17 VERMONT: I came up yesterday to do the fall clean up, but it’s raining this morning. As much as I want to be outside, it’s hard to garden while holding an umbrella. There was a storm here a few days ago and trees fell, taking out the power and phone service, now restored. Branches rained down on the yard, along with the rain.

Usually at this point in the year, there have been several frosts, but this year only one. Lots of perennials are still green. Only a handful of plants still have flowers: roses, cimicfuga, loosestrife. The pond is full and draining. The pasture has been mowed and looks very tidy. Brady the horse is still here because the grass is still green. The culvert is half full of sand and gravel.

Some shrubs still have faded green leaves, but most of the trees are bare. The beech are holding onto their brown leaves as usual. The Japanese maple that I planted by the edge of the pond years ago is still eking out a living from the rock and is maybe three feet tall at his point. It is incredibly red at the moment.


Vivid red, amidst fading green, yellow and brown.

The Japanese maple, two decades old, and spruce to its left, four or more decades, are both surviving with toe holds in the rock. They are natural bonsai trees. The three hemlocks to the right are all much bigger and younger.

End of the season beds above and below are calling out for a clean up.

November Begins.

11-1-17 SHORT HILLS: After a long fairly dry spell, we have had rain, about four inches in the last week, and more on the way. It’s all welcome. The foundation shrubs took a beating with the work on the house, but the rain has them perking up. The ash and walnut trees are mostly bare, but the other tree species are just starting to drop. By the end of this month, most of the leaves will be down.

We saw a show Saturday night, The Band’s Visit. Tony Shalhoub plays an Egyptian bandleader, Tewfiq, the band is trying to get to a gig at an Israeli town, but ends up in a desert backwater by mistake. Dina, Katrina Lenk, and the townspeople interact with the band. It was sweet if unheard of outside the Barrymore Theatre, and it had some nice music.

Get ready for Standard Time to return on Sunday and darkness at 5 PM.


Color from the burning bushes is quite evident on a cloudy day.

The yard has lots of trees and shrubs and the lawn is just to fill the area in between the trees and shrubs.

About half the leaves are down, almost all of the rest will fall this month.


Walking around Times Square before dinner, we caught a street show. That's a performer jumping over several people from the crowd.