Drenched Anew Every Day.

5-30-19 SHORT HILLS: We got back here on Tuesday, and there was an inch of rain in the gauge. Since then, we have 4.2 additional inches in three days—that’s a month’s worth of rain. Everything is soggy and dripping, there has been flash flooding locally, there was a tornado in a nearby county, and the lightning has had Kaley in a nightly panic in spite of her BCD medication.

Needless to say, the yard is green and lush, and it’s all growing before our eyes, the good stuff and the weeds.

This afternoon I planted that chestnut tree that I mentioned a few weeks ago. The one that I moved from an endangered spot, but traumatized it getting it out of a root bound site. I put it in a bucket of water with rooting hormone, and it did grow several hair-like new roots. Now it’s in the ground, treated with more rooting hormone, near another chestnut that will, hopefully, act like an uncle to the sapling.

New blooms: mock orange, English holly, roses.


A pair of pix from the morning we left VT for NJ.

Back to the Future Tomorrow.

5-27-19 VERMONT: The last two days have been beautiful. They would have been perfect except for the black flies. I’m continuing to get the place in shape for Anna and Gardner’s Wedding in June.

I replaced two fence rails, one of them had to be made from a locust sapling because it needed to be 11.5 feet long. All the standard rails are 10 feet long. I added some more plant supports. I removed wire cages from elm saplings by the road. I watered all the new stuff. Much weeding was done and a bit more pruning. I skimmed the pond again. There are definitely five turtles, perhaps more. Judy bought a colorful basket for her pumpkin cart at Gardeners Supply.

NJ tomorrow.

New blooms: quince, marsh marigold, bane berry, Mohican viburnum.


The front of the new house with Judy's cart

Newly adorned pumpkin cart.

Very early AM game cam pic of deer near the small pond. Notice the time? DST would be an hour later, of course, but that time is still about half an hour before sunup.

Primrose volunteer.

Quince. Quince opened in NJ on 4-22-19, more than a month ago.

House and Garden.

5-26-19 VERMONT: We’ve been here for a few days, and it’s been more garden work for me and housework for Judy. We put out the outdoor furniture and Judy set up her pumpkin cart.

I planted perennials that I bought at The Farm in NJ—a delphinium, D.elatum ‘Pacific Giant Astolat’, with the other delphinium, a French hollyhock, Malva sylvestris ‘Zebrina’, in the rock garden. I put a foxglove, Digitalis mertonensis, in the upper terrace bed. In the bed below the deck, I put a lupin, Lupinus ‘Gallery Pink’, a hollyhock, Alcea rosea ‘Fiesta Time’, and a lobelia, L. siphilitica. I also planted ajuga volunteers from NJ on the terrace.

We bought three tomatoes from Gardeners Supply in Lebanon, two Sun Gold and one Early Girl that are potted for the deck. I also potted some basil and planted parsley in the herb bed. Perennial herbs—thyme, oregano, tarragon, chive and sage are all present and accounted for. The special herbs in the pasture are all alive, but haven’t shown much growth.

Otherwise there’s been a lot of weeding and pruning and some watering even though there’s been good rain. I did a pond treatment. There are five, and maybe, six turtles. The pond clarity is good.

New blooms: forget-me-not, Virginia blue bells, jack-in-the-pulpit, azalea, sweet woodruff, spurge, apple, epimedium, pink and yellow lamium, pin cherry.


Foggy morning.

White trillium comes out after the red ones.

Jack-in-the-pulpit, there are four of them sharing a space with a Virginia blue bell.

Virginia blue bells blooming between hostas and ferns

First azalea.

Bleeding hearts, red and white, beneath an apple that is about to open.

Apple volunteer is the first to open here.

Full Swing Spring.

5-22-19 SHORT HILLS: The yard is glorious. Spring is at its peak. All the shrubs show new growth, and many things are in bloom. The grass is growing like crazy and getting mowed. The crape myrtle are showing new growth, three of four anyway, at the bases of the plants, only one has growth on upper parts of the branches.

It has been very rainy, there was four inches in the rain gauge when I got back here after being away for two weeks.

I bought several perennials for VT at The Farm and a spirea, ‘Little Princess’, Spiraea japonica, for NJ. I planted it in the bed by the living room windows.

Before I went to VT last time, I dug up a chestnut tree volunteer, three feet tall, growing near the road, under the wires. It was near an ash tree and the roots were entangled with the bigger tree’s roots. It was pretty traumatic to the chestnut. If I left it where it was, the town would have cut it down when the wires are periodically cleared of tree growth. I put it in a bucket of water with fertilizer and rooting hormone, 1-Naphthaleneacetic Acid, and it looks like it’s making roots. I’ll plant it before we leave for the summer.

New blooms: rhododendron ponticum, star of Bethlehem, lilac, rose, linden tree, hawthorn, bridal wreath spirea, red chokeberry.


This guy, pretending to be a squirrel, is about ten feet up a willow tree, fleeing form the dogs.

Star of Bethlehem, another spring ephemeral.

Rosa rugosa, the first and most reliable of the roses.

Rhododendron ponticum. It has a beautiful flower cluster. In the UK and some other places they are an invasive species, but not here.

Deutzia is a small shrub tolerant of shade. The common name is bridal wreath, not to be confused with bridal wreath spirea, below.

The spirea flower, superficially, looks a lot like the chokeberry below. The leaves are quite different.

Red chokeberry puts out a nice flower cluster in the spring and red berries in the fall with orange foliage.

House wren politely posed for me.

Spring Might Have Arrived in VT.

5-18-19 VERMONT: The last two days have actually been spring-like, sunny, sixties, some breeze. The last rain, two nights ago, gave us 0.2 inches of precip.

Yesterday I finished the picnic table repair and re-located the game cams. Today I planted the special herbs in their raised bed. I think and hope they’re ready for their world debut. There were animal tracks in the bed before I planted anything so I put a wire barrier around the bed and capped it with more wire because one year crows ate all the corn seedlings. We can’t have crows eating the special herbs.

Alison and Dan arrived today with a bunch of wedding accoutrements that they assembled and stowed away. Back to NJ for me and Bally tomorrow.

New blooms: service berry, wild strawberry, bleeding heart, white trillium.


Star magnolia flower. The tree has been getting better for the last ten days.

Next to the magnolia is a service berry, a small tree or large shrub, which is just starting to bloom.

Eastern phoebe soesn't use the feeders, but is a insect eater, They don't show up until there are bugs in the air.

Star magnolia trees looking pretty good. The service berry is to the left and less dramatic.

Sightings.

5-16-19 VERMONT: I think everything survived the snow. The last clump melted today, definitely the latest date for snow to hang on that I can remember. Mt. Moosilauke and Lafayette are snow covered.

I am catching up on my chores and have almost finished checking off the items on my list. I cleaned up a ton of deadfall in the pasture, mostly white pine branches, big ones that I had to cut up with the chain saw to move. All the supports are up for the early bloomers in the garden. I have pruned blueberries, lilacs and roses. There’s always some weeding to do. I replaced one fence rail, it was an eleven-foot gap so no commercially available rails are long enough, they’re all ten foot. I made a long rail out of a straight beech sapling.

Hummingbirds are back, and I filled the feeders a few days ago. We have a catbird here, but there are Baltimore orioles and indigo buntings in the neighborhood. Our indigo bunting hasn’t appeared this year, as yet. I saw a peregrine falcon chase a robin around the yard, the robin escaped.

There was a hooded merganser on the pond yesterday for about an hour. She repeatedly dove, looking for a meal. I didn’t see her eat anything.

Four turtles were out of the pond catching sun a few days ago. I suppose there could be more. You can only do the turtle census when you see them at the same time.

Early a few mornings ago, I saw a weasel-like animal slip into the pond and swim about half way around staying close to the edge. It was dark colored and about the size of a squirrel. I guess it was a mink, way too small for an otter, and most of the other species in the weasel family are not aquatic.

The last unusual sighting was this evening—two hot air balloons drifted by, slowly moving east.

New blooms: trout lily.


Surprise this evening, two hot air balloons.

This is the nearer one-very colorful.

Is there a collective noun for a group of turtles.

Goldfinches males are especially vivid this year. The females look similar but much drabber.

Hooded merganser spent an hour at the pond repeatedly diving for something, crayfish? fish? amphibian eggs?

The snow is gone again-hopefully for the season.

Vermont Surprise.

5-14-19 VERMONT: I’ve been busy. I did the fertilizing, some pruning, put up the flower bed barriers, built a raised bed for the special herbs, some weeding. I lost a day or two to rain.

Last night it began to rain again, but there was a big Vermont surprise this morning—a half inch of new snow. And I had thought the snow was gone for the year.

There was a brilliant red sunrise a couple days ago, there’s a pic on FB and another one today. I guess it’s true, ‘Red sky at dawn, gardener take warn.’

Before the snow, the perennials were all up and growing. I hope they are hardy enough to deal with this.

 New blooms: vinca minor, dandelion, pulmonaria.


Welcome to Vermont.

Two days ago.

Morning red reflected in  the pond.

No red or green today.

Daffodils and peonies are thinking WTF. So am I.

Early Spring in Vermont.

5-9-19 VERMONT: I came up yesterday to a sunny day in the sixties, and today was the same except it started in the thirties. I’m here to open the gardens and set-up the yard for the warm season. The snow is gone, but only by a few days. On the game cams, there was still a drop of snow on May 2. The lawn guys were here and cleaned up a thousand sticks that were scattered around the yard. Scott cleaned up the huge pine branch that had come down.

The new grass in the pasture is a little thin. I’ll fertilize it. The pond is pretty clear, I did the treatments that keep algae under control. I saw newts, fish, turtles, crayfish and, of course, frogs.

I started by cleaning the beds of fallen branches and leaves and hauled away two cartloads of debris. I moved the picnic table onto the deck. I removed deadfall—mostly pine branches from the honey suckle bushes, pruned damaged shrubs, pruned hydrangeas and clematis, and that was a full day.

In bloom: daffodil, primrose, star magnolia, forsythia, hellebore, hepatica, blood root, wild ginger, purple lamium, violets, trillium, pachysandra.


Another spring surprise-Hepatica, so named because the leaves were thought to resemble a liver. Said leaves last all season.

Trillium, also called Wake Robin, available in white as well. Three petals, three sepals, three leaves all symmetrically arranged at 120° angles.

Primrose. The Japanese primrose on the stalks open later.

Hellebore turns the flowers toward the ground making a good picture harder to get. Is it done this way to attract some special pollinator?

Wild ginger. This little brown flower is right on the dirt. Who pollinates this?

Double blood root flowers last longer than the native plant, below.

The blood root flower is evanescent, lasting for only a few days.

Violets, also out in white.

Blooms and Birds.

5-6-19 SHORT HILLS: The trip back from VA was a breeze, and we got the dogs that afternoon. We all sat inside yesterday watching it rain and rain and rain. We got 2.25 inches, and parts of the yard are quagmires.

Today was sunny except for a very brief shower. I was back outside pruning again. The very shy crape myrtles are still asleep except for one that has buds just opening.

New blooms: aucuba, pulmonaria, ajuga, wild strawberry, burning bush, double-file viburnum, Siebold viburnum, nannyberry viburnum, honeysuckle bush, chestnut tree, deutzia, red twig dogwood, first rhododendron, leucothoe, clematis, wintergreen barberry, mulberry.


Rhododendron, the first one in this yard every year by more than a week.

Chestnut tree has lots of flowers and buds on many stalks.

Clematis in a pink pastel.

Above and below, very similar looking woodpeckers. Hairy above is substantially bigger and with a more prominent beak, it's almost a WMD.

Downy woodpecker is a mini-me of the Hairy woodpecker. Both pix were taken from the same spot, and you can see that the feeder is the same size in both shots, but this bird is half the size of the other.

Catbird hangs out under and on the suet feeder.