More Little Flowers.

3-30-19 SHORT HILLS: Things are getting dry. We had a very brief shower yesterday that left a drop of water in the rain gauge. We might get rain tomorrow.

I have done the spring fertilizing over the past few days. I used 120 pounds of generic 10-10-10 and 100 pounds of Holly-tone on the acidophiles, mostly evergreens. I used some bone-meal on spring bulbs that put out foliage but don’t flower, the phosphorus in the ground up bones is supposed to help that.

I planted a forsythia, Forsythia x intermedia, ‘Lynwood Gold’ in a bare spot along the road where there are lots of other forsythias to make it feel at home.

We had dinner at Parma in the city with Linda and Bob and Char and Roger during the week.

New blooms: crocus, vinca minor.


Crocus yesterday just starting to smile.

Vinca minor with a few early blooms.

Today those crocus are laughing.

Here's a better pic of the snowflake. You can see the similarities to and differences from the snowdrops I posted a few weeks ago.

Winter and Spring.

3-26-19 SHORT HILLS: We ended up with about 8-10 inches of snow, needing a new dig out. In Hanover there was negligible accumulation, the difference is that we are about 1300 feet elevation and about 8 miles north of Hanover at 500 feet elevation.

Anna and Gardner came up on Friday, the day of the storm, but we told them to stay in Hanover because the road was impassable before it was plowed. They were busy with wedding errands on Saturday and finally got to the house that evening for dinner. They were impressed by the difference in snowfall amounts.

Neighbor Steve was boiling sap on Saturday. The smoke and steam were swirling around the sugar shack.

I put on the snowshoes in the afternoon and walked the dogs across the pasture. The eight inches of new, wet, heavy snow made it a tough job. Only Maizie made it all the way out with me.


The snow sliding off the roof has made a model of the Matterhorn.

View of the house from the road, but the view from inside is disappearing.

Vanishing view.

The porch is becoming a tunnel.

Steve and Diana's sugar shack in swirling steam and smoke. That thing on top of the shack is a huge cupola that has sides that open to let the steam out. Next to the cupola is a chimney for the wood smoke. They boil the sap to reduce the volume from 40 gallons of sap to one gallon of syrup, generating a lot of steam.

Back in NJ, about two hundred miles due south of VT, there was 1.4 inches of rain. Crocuses and vinca are out in the neighborhood, but not here yet. Maples and elms are showing flowers, as is andromeda and pussy willow, snowflakes are up.

New blooms: red maple, elm, snowflake, pussy willow


Red maple flowers.

Snowflake is a cousin of snowdrop. You can see the resemblance, even though it's in a pachysandra bed.

Pussy willow.

Andromeda is always the first shrub here to flower.

Elm flowers.

In Vermont, March is a Winter Month.

3-22-19 VERMONT: We came up a few days ago to find a lot of snow here. We have two feet in spots while a couple of sunny areas have melted down to the grass. It was sunny and in the forties in the afternoons but in the teens at night. We could walk around the pasture on the crust, but would occasionally break through and get a boot full of snow.

Our neighbors, Steve and Diana, have started sugaring. The buckets are out and the sap is dripping. They were boiling yesterday for a short run. It takes 40 gallons of sap to get one gallon of syrup. When they are boiling the sap the sugar shack is enveloped in steam and smoke.

The big pond is still frozen, but the little pond in the pasture is open. It gets more sun.


There's about two feet of snow in places. The first floor windows are partially blocked by the piles under the eaves. Welcome to spring.

Sugar time. The old Vermonters planted sugar maples along the roads, not for foliage display, but to facilitate collecting the sap.

Maizie has no trouble walking on top of the snow, we occasionally break through the crust, but haven't bothered with the snowshoes.

Judy and Diana gossiping over the fence.

The bucket has frozen and unfrozen sap. The tree is only losing sap from the spot where the spigot is plugged in. All the rest of the vascular bundles under the bark are intact.

Today it’s snowing. We’ve had about four inches of new stuff and all the trees are coated. Snow is sliding off the metal roof and thudding on the piles under the eaves. At times we have white out conditions. The power is out and the generator is running. It’s very beautiful, but I’m ready for it all to melt.


Today we have another three inches, so far, but it's slowly warming up and may turn to rain.

It's still beautiful, but I've had enough snow for this year.

The Philadelphia O Again.

3-18-19 SHORT HILLS: Last Friday we were at NJPAC in Newark for a concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Now you may remember that we heard them, the Phil Orch, the previous Friday at Carnegie Hall. We accidently bought tickets to each performance from different brochures at different times. We decided to see them both. The more recent concert opened with a Haydn Overture rather then the new composition, but the rest was the same, Mendelssohn Piano Concerto and Shubert Symphony. Jan Lisiecki and Yannick Nézet-Séguin were again excellent. I think I liked the acoustics at Prudential Hall better than at Carnegie.

We had Alan and Bill as guests because NJPAC offered free tickets to fill unsold seats. We all ate at Marcus B & P before the concert. That Friday was gorgeous BTW with temps in the mid-seventies.

Wednesday, March 20, brings the Vernal Equinox at 5:58 PM EDT, and the full moon happens about four hours later, obviously the first one of spring. Night and day are already almost equal. At the equinoxes the sun rises and sets due east and due west, so today’s sunset is almost there.

The snow is gone here, hopefully until next winter, but we go to VT tomorrow where there is still plenty of snow.


The sunset is almost due west, where it will be at the Equinox. It was setting at the left edge of the picture during the winter.

NJPAC, The Philadelphia Orchestra waiting for the concert master and conductor.

Definitely Springish.

3-13-19 SHORT HILLS: It’s been sunny and warm, although yesterday was very windy. I’ve been outside doing early clean up, picking broken tree branches off of shrubs, pruning broken branches and broken bamboo shoots and piling it in the driveway for a trip to the dump. It’s good to be outside doing gardening after the long winter.

The first snowdrops are open, and others plants around the yard are up and stirring. Viburnums, saucer magnolia, pussy willow and hydrangeas are breaking bud, and daffodils, wild strawberry and marsh marigold are showing new leaves and stalks. Half of the yard still has slushy snow cover.

Sunrise to sunset is almost twelve hours as we approach the Vernal Equinox.

The initial wave of grackles, who have been here, were joined by dozens more and by the red-wing blackbirds who flock with the grackles in the spring. I have had to refill the bird feeders almost daily.

The weather radar shows an impending storm, but with warm weather predicted, I hope it will be rain and not snow.


First snowdrop had started to open at the end of February before the last snowstorm. They were snowed under, but melted out without a problem.

The red-wing  blackbirds are back as of yesterday as well as another bunch of grackles with whom they flock. The grackles are bigger, have yellow eyes and iridescent feathers. The starlings have been here for a week or so.

The red-wing blackbirds have black legs, beaks and eyes. The red shows up more in flight.

Here's a grackle from last fall.

Hawk Hunt and Carnegie.

3-10-19 SHORT HILLS: After several days of sub-freezing temps, today is warmer and rainy. Some of the snow is leaving us and releasing the shrubs from icy bondage.

There was excitement at the front yard feeders this morning. A small, blue jay-sized, hawk was chasing a small, gray bird around the feeders in an incredibly acrobatic 30 sec display. The small bird, maybe a tufted titmouse, stayed ahead of the hawk and flew over the roof with the hawk close behind. I lost sight of them at that point. The hawk was black and white with bold striping on the tail. I’m guessing it was a sharp-shinned hawk. A few times this winter I have seen little piles of feathers in the yard, so maybe the hawk has been here before.

There was also excitement Friday night at Carnegie Hall. The Philadelphia Orchestra with Conductor Yannick Nézet Séguin, a favorite of ours, played the NY Premiere of Nico Muhly‘s Liar, Suite from Marnie, his opera that recently premiered at the Met. The composer was on hand for an enthusiastic reception from the full house.

I found the piece chaotic at times but melodic at others. One of the instruments on the long list was a ‘brake drum’, an automobile part re-purposed as a percussion instrument usually used by steel bands. There was a piano toward the back of the stage used as another instrument for occasional notes.

Judy and I both preferred the next two pieces, Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No. 1 and Shubert Symphony No. 9 after the intermission. The piano got moved to center stage for the concerto, played by Jan Lisiecki. He’s a 23 year old, very tall and very brilliant pianist.

We had an excellent dinner beforehand at 'Trattoria Dell'Arte'.


The beautiful Carnegie Hall while the Philadelphia Orchestra was warming up.

Architectural details in gold, the acoustics are golden also.

Slightly closer look at the stage. You can see the open piano in the back on the left.

Cold Week.

3-6-19 SHORT HILLS: That anticipated next storm dumped up to six inches of wet snow on our corner of NJ. It was heavy and wet and bent the bushes to the ground, but, by afternoon, it was warm enough to allow most of the shrubs to shake free. Since then it has been very cold, into the single digits at night.

The birds have been draining the feeders almost daily.

I forgot to mention before we went to Florida that one snow drop was up and showed a white flower bud, but it is now buried in the snow. I’ll show it when it melts out someday, perhaps, hopefully, next week.

New blooms: snowdrop.


These guys, the cardinals, really stand out against the snow.

House sparrow is fluffed up against the cold in his own down coat.

A pair of house finches are just a few inches apart, but he is in better focus here...

And she is focused in this image.

Red-bellied woodpecker, doesn't that seem like the wrong name?

Here's what we got last Sunday/Monday. It was only 5-6 inches but it covered everything...

Until it warmed up in the afternoon, and most of the trees and shrubs shook off the snow.

Warm Weekend.

3-2-19 NAPLES, FLORIDA: We arrived yesterday afternoon, got picked up by Ken at RSW and drove back to their gorgeous condo on the Gulf. We caught the sunset before dinner with Carol and Ken and Henri and Ritta.

Today we set out early to visit the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. We were there for only a few minutes when hostess Carol had a medical issue that ended our walk prematurely. She seems fine now. We had dinner at Ken’s yacht club.

The weather has been lovely, but we moved up our departure time to escape the snowstorm arriving in NJ tomorrow night.


Sunset over the Gulf.

White ibises on the beach.

The Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary also has open areas.

Broad-winged hawk at Corkscrew.

Red-shouldered hawk.