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.