Back in VT.

5-21-18 VERMONT: I came up yesterday driving through a series of showers. Today was beautiful, warm and sunny with a breeze to keep the black flies away. Everything dried out quickly after the rain yesterday. We haven’t been here for two months. We didn’t get up in April at all because of winter storms.

I was afraid I would be too late to set up for summer, and that the gardens would be too far along, but the plants have waited patiently for my arrival.

I put in the screens and took out the glass storm doors, took the tarp off the terrace furniture, took down the dryer vent guard, put away the snow shovels and ice choppers and snow shoes, cleaned up a huge broken white pine branch that had fallen across the driveway. Actually one of Santa’s elves had already cut it up and moved it out of the driveway. [If you are reading this, dear Elf, thanks so much.] It took four cart loads to get it all on the compost pile. The honeysuckle bush that was bombed by the branch took a beating, but will be OK.

I turned on the outside water, set up the solar fence charger for the veggies, put up the pasture gate, opened the barn windows, [The barn BTW, for the barn fans, is 66 feet long and 30 feet wide and is 100 feet from the pasture fence.]

I put out a couple benches, cleaned up in front of the new house, put up peony supports and meadow rue supports, started putting up the bed barriers, emptied the mouse traps, treated the pond, talked to Andy and Steve, inspected the pasture, did a bit of pruning, and more that I can’t remember now.

In bloom: violet, bleeding heart, lamium—yellow and purple, ajuga, Virginia blue bells, trillium, dandelion, garlic-mustard, wild strawberry, pulmonaria, forget-me-not, pachysandra, sweet woodruff, jack-in-the-pulpit, star magnolia, apple, spurge, hellebore, Mohican viburnum, primrose, epimedium, azalea, alkanet, vinca minor, quince, wild ginger, lily-of-the-valley.

New blooms [Short Hills, yesterday]: star-of-Bethlehem, wild cherry.


Clear skies with a breeze from the NW.

This small blue flower is alkanet, it is related to the next flower...

Forget-Me-Not has a slightly larger flower but the leaves are quite different.

More blue--Virginia blue bells.

Sometimes the 'blue bells' are white.

Trillium does it in sets of three--three petals, three sepals, and three leaves, all oriented at 120° angles.

Do you think the painted turtle chose this warming spot because of the violet violets?