Back in March.

4-30-18 SHORT HILLS: Today is nasty, in the low forties with a brisk, cold wind and scattered showers—I’m staying inside. It’s like early March even though the calendar says tomorrow is Uno de Mayo.

Yesterday I cleaned up branch debris on the road, pruned along the road, pruned in the bed under the living room windows, raked up the sweet gum tree seed balls once again, and dumped it all in the compost area. That was after we got back from a brunch with Anna and Gardner in NYC.

Tomorrow we go to the UK for a week of driving around Cornwall and looking at quaint.

New blooms: quince, apple, boxwood.


Quince, a shrub usually with a red flower, but in white resembles the other fruits.

Grape hyacinth is a cluster of little bells, another spring ephemera.

Apple resembles quince above and pear below.

Boxwood is an evergreen shrub with inconspicuous flowers.

Pear has been out for a while. Pear and apple are trees, of course, as is the Yoshino cherry I showed a few weeks ago.

More Planting.

4-28-18 SHORT HILLS: It actually and finally feels like spring. The rain total from a few days ago was 1.25 inches and another 0.1 inch fell yesterday. Today it’s sunny, but there might be an afternoon shower.

Wilpat was here to open the sprinkler system. Two repairs were necessary. I’ve started the regular spring pruning, which will take days to complete.

We had dinner with Alan last night and will eat with Lynn and Bill tonight. Tomorrow we have brunch with Anna and Gardner in NYC.

Yesterday I planted two small roses, one a climber by the new section of fence where the black pine came down, Rosa ‘America’ and the other near the roses by the living room window bed, Rosa ‘Winnipeg Parks’.

New blooms: bleeding heart, currant, grape hyacinth.


Currant, the berries will have the same color as the flowers, if the birds leave any behind.

Bleeding heart, there are four plants in this yard that seem very happy, but they haven't spread. In VT they re-seed themselves everywhere. Do the nurseries sell sterile versions?

Clatonia is another spring ephemera. Some of them have a red stripe on the petals.

Pink and white daffodils.

An orange and yellow daffodil.

New Plantings.

4-25-18 SHORT HILLS: We got more than an inch of rain today. It was overcast and cool, when not raining. Yesterday was warm and sunny, and we went to the Farm for the first plant shopping of the year. I started filling holes in the yard left by the storms and the workers last fall.

I bought a small blue spruce, Picea pungens glauca, that went into the spot where the Japanese maple lived. It was a tough planting job because of all the maple roots that had to be cut out. In the spot where the black pine was that fell across the driveway, I put a Korean spice viburnum, V. carlesii ‘Diana’. That spot also had a bunch of roots to saw off. I also filled the in holes left by the tree stump. Earlier I did more pruning and more dead fall removal of elm branches.

New blooms: violet, saucer magnolia, pear tree, clatonia.


Saucer Magnolia. They didn't bloom last year because they were killed by a late frost in April after a warm February.

Violets, their foliage lasts all season unlike the flowers in the last post.

Pear tree in white.

Yoshino cherry very white.

The Spring Parade.

4-23-18 SHORT HILLS: Sorry about the gap—I had a cold and cough that is still lingering—and missed a friend’s birthday party and an engagement brunch that we both wanted to go to. I have been outside for short spells the last two days doing pruning. It’s been sunny and pleasant, and the sun on my back felt warm.

The spring succession is underway. It is relentless, but cold temporarily slows it down. The flowers have to be there when the pollinators appear. It’s a yearly appointment that both plant and bug need for survival. Climate change may threaten the symbiosis because one or the other may hatch out or bloom before the other is available.

Our trees are pruned of broken and hanging branches. The fence has been repaired. It’s almost time to look for replacements for the plantings damaged by the storms and damaged last fall by the painters, roofers and window replacement.

New blooms: trout lily, march marigold.


March marigold, a spring ephemera, puts out leaves in March, flowers in April and vanishes in May.

It would be a nice ground cover if it didn't disappear for a year between bloomings.

Trout lily, another yellow spring surprise, that will soon be gone. There's a pollinator on the flower in the middle of the picture.

Back in the Cold.

4-18-18 SHORT HILLS: We had torrential rain on Monday. It came down in buckets. The driveway was filled and a river cut through the yard for a short time. I had fertilized the day before and was hoping the rain would help it sink in, but it probably washed a lot of it away. Today it’s sunny, but windy and cold.

We are very happy and pleased about Anna and Gardner’s engagement.

New blooms: Yoshino cherry.


Grackles usually look black, but have iridescent feathers and look like this in the right light.

Goldfinch has almost changed into summer clothes, but still has a few gray spots on his back...

...but not on front.

The upper bird is either a non-breeding male or female,

Yoshino cherry trees bloom before the Kwanzan, pink cherry trees.


Chipmunks use the fence rails as highways.

A Brief Taste of Spring.

4-15-18 SHORT HILLS: We were supposed to go to Vermont today for the week, but several friends said don’t come up because the weather’s delivering ice and snow. I wonder if they would have had a different excuse if the weather were OK. It’s pretty nasty here today with temps in the thirties, overcast sky, gusty wind and rain expected later.

So we stayed in NJ, and I painted the windows in the sunroom that had been damaged by the leak in the roof, and that I had repaired a few weeks ago. I had replaced a few pieces of rotten wood with Azek.

The last few days have been gorgeous, sunny and in the eighties, and we thought spring had finally arrived. I was outside continuing to do the clean up all day. Frank’s Tree was here and pulled all the big hangers out of the trees, virtually every tree had broken branches. They chipped it all and took it away. Actually I found more deadfall after they left and added that to the street pile.

We also had them cut down the sickly Japanese maple. It had been one of my favorites, but had become just a dying remnant of its old self.

GM Fence was here also to give us an estimate for repair to the storm damage and replace rotted posts and rails. Their visit is almost a yearly event.

Yesterday I did the first fertilizing, Holly-tone for the acidophiles and regular 10-10-10 for all the others. I also gave the grass granular lime. I used some lime on the alkali lovers, lilacs, forsythia and columbine.

New blooms: pussy willow, spicebush, pachysandra, daffodil.


First daffodil.

Pussy willow flowers, the leaf buds are just starting to open.

Pachysandra flower easy to overlook, but it's interesting if you take a close look.

Forsythia leads the yellow parade of spring. Behind the forsythia on the left is another shrub with yellow flowers, spicebush.

Spicebush close-up. Spicebush, forsythia, pachysandra, pussy willow and andromeda all open the flowers before the new leaves.

When Does Warm Happen?

4-8-17 SHORT HILLS: We had another snow with barely a dusting here, but VT got several inches. Today the last remnant of the snowplow piles in the driveway melted, leaving behind more debris from the downed pine tree. We have had a lot of rain, but today was sunny, if windy and cold.

Today we drove to Philly to have brunch with friends Stephen, Christine and Bob. Last night we had dinner with Bill and Lynn in Summit. Back on Thursday we had dinner in NYC with Jon and Sara before we heard the NY Phil.

They premiered a new composition called Metacosmos by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, which got a bunch of great reviews. She has been the Philharmonic’s Kravis Emerging Composer since 2015. Then pianist Benjamin Grosvenor did Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3. The orchestra played Beethoven’s Third Symphony, Eroica, after intermission. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted.

I have continued to drag broken branches and smashed bamboo out to the street. We are still waiting for the tree pruners to take the broken, hanging branches out of the trees.

New blooms: Siberian squill.


Bald eagle on a strafing run. This great image is from Naples, FL, taken by Gail Harty.

Another crocus shivering in a cold wind.

Siberian squill is not native to Siberia, as it turns out.

David Geffen Hall, née Avery Fisher Hall, Philharmonic Hall before that still looks the same, before the concert.

The Fifth Storm.

4-2-17 SHORT HILLS: It did it again. We got another 6-8 inches of wet snow overnight after a cool, but pleasant Easter. I don’t think there’s much new damage, but I was so alarmed at the little Southern magnolia once again being bent to the ground by the snow that I went outside in my bathrobe to gently ease the snow off it. This afternoon the sun is out and it’s in the upper thirties.

I have been working on the storm damage almost every day and have created a huge pile on the road at the top of our driveway. I have cut up and dragged out most of the broken branches on the ground and started on the bamboo. The bamboo have many, many broken stalks, which weigh down other stalks that are not cracked or broken. After removing the broken ones the others sometimes stand up again with a little help.

New blooms: Vinca minor, andromeda, forsythia, pussy willow, snow flake.


Another 6-8 inches of heavy, wet snow. That magnolia in the center of the picture is almost bent double again. I was afraid it would lose more branches, so I went out early in the morning in my bathrobe to gently brush and shake the snow off it, with the loss of only one leaf.

The pack is happy in  the snow. Below are the new blooms from before the new snow.

Snow flake looks a lot like its cousin, 'snow drop'. Snowflake has those yellow spots and is a little umbrella. It always appears a few weeks after the snowdrops.

Pussy willow isn't actually a bloom, but a furry bud.

Andromeda blooms looks like lily-of-the-valley and blueberry flowers.

Forsythia is starting, today's snow won't hurt it because the temps are in the thirties.

Vinca minor is another early opener.