Closing Up.

8-30-21 VERMONT: We go back to NJ tomorrow until leaf season here in October. Today looked like rain, but now the sun is out and it’s hot again. I have continued doing close-up chores, and I think everything is done. About an hour or so into the trip tomorrow, I’ll remember some forgotten something.

We had decent rain from Henri. The new hurricane will probably exit the US without reaching New England at all. Once it’s September, there’s usually plenty of rain and heavy dew every morning to keep all the plants well watered. 

The hummingbirds have been draining the feeders. I refilled one of them three times in a week—that’s an quart and a half of sugar water. They will probably be gone by the time we’re back for the leaves. We’ve had heron visits and kingfisher visits in the last few days, but no pix. The size difference between and hummingbird and a blue heron  is amazing.

There are lots of Monarch caterpillars, some large and almost ready to pupate and some tiny ones. Also a number of new, flashy butterflies. By October, I expect a lot of butterflies. 

New blooms: toad lily.    

Monarch caterpillars on a single stalk of Aesclepias incarnata, swamp milkweed. Three is a crowd.

Another caterpillar. the black stuff is caterpillar poop. This one is almost big enough to form a chrysalis.

Toad lily, Tricyrtis, is a complex little flower. Another view below.

I guess the toad lily name comes from the spots.

I love the look of the pond bank, a mix of planted perennials, wild flowers, water plants and ferns.

Winding Down.

8-28-21 VERMONT: Well, summer is winding down for our stay in VT. The summer always seems so short—I know it isn’t shorter than winter, but winter seems to stretch on and on while the summer flies by. Bill and Lynn were here for a few days, the last guests of the season. 

We had delivery of a new mattress and box spring. The box spring couldn’t fit up the stairway, so we had to get a split box spring, which was fine. 

Today and yesterday have been put away days. Benches, deck gates, hammock, canoe, rowboat, old carriage, porch rockers, hoses, buckets are all stashed away until next May. We will be back in October for the leaves and do the rest of the winterizing then, and in November when I will be back to clear the flower beds after a hard frost. 

We had a visit, brief, from a wood duck this morning, and a blue heron a few days ago.

New blooms: hardy hibiscus, bottle gentian.    

Wood duck, female or non-breeding male.

Wood duck again. We have had them before a few springs ago.

Hardy Hibiscus flower lasts only for a day, but is the size of a dinner plate.

Anemone, fall blooming variety.

Bottle Gentian. That's as open as it gets. So how does it get pollinated?

A brand new, shiny Monarch butterfly, probably from one of our caterpillars. There are several more caterpillars eating milkweed.

Kaley RIP.

Kaley--RIP.

Waiting for Henri.

8-22-21 VERMONT: Summer is winding down, it’s still hot and muggy, we’ve still got flowers, the leaves are still on the trees, but it is now two months since the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox is a month away, and we have hit that part of the sun’s sine-wave shaped curve that is nearly vertical. The sun will drop out of the northern hemisphere heading south. The sun is now half way to the Equator and in 60 days will be that far on the other side of the Equator, 12° S Latitude.

Actually some leaves are turning and some have fallen. Our mini-drought ended with TS Fred dumping 0.6 inches of rain here a few days ago. Now we are waiting for Hurricane Henri to soak us again. He is in Connecticut and headed our way, but may veer east. We have no wind at the moment and the sun is out. 

I just filled a hummingbird feeder for the second time this week. They sucked down a pint of sugar water in three days. The apples are turning red, and there’s lots this year. Mosquitoes have become very annoying, they appeared about a week ago, and bug-spray is essential for spending time outdoors. 

We are all slowly recovering from Kaley’s death. Maizie is especially bereaved and hardly wags her tail at all. 

New blooms: pink turtlehead, fall anemone. 

Ligularia dentata is described as a 'foliage plant', which means that the important features are the large, round purplish leaves. I think these are pretty nice flowers.

TS Fred delivered rain and fog with very little wind.

Turtlehead in pink. A few weeks ago I posted this flower in white. In that spot, it grows with a lot more sunlight, probably why it's earlier.

Blanca, the new dog, seemed to like this spot for a while, but not any more. Did she and Teddy have a falling out?

I Know Where the Yellow Went.

8-14-21 VERMONT: Until today, it has been a dry August. We got a sprinkle last night and another this morning, about 0.1 inch total. I had  replaced the soakers for the new maple trees and begun watering the new plantings. BTW that phlox went into the bed with the new echinacea. 

Socially we’ve been active—we had dinner at Shari and Dave’s and then we met Laura-Beth at Han in Hanover. Today my cousins, David and Ken, who I hadn’t seen in years, stopped by with their ladies on their way home from the Kingdom. Granddaughter Lucy and her friend Cory, who have been here most of the summer, go to NYC tomorrow, leaving us on our own. If the Delta Variant gets worse, we may all be back in isolation like last year.

We had another heat wave here with temps hitting 90° three days in a row. Today is better.

New blooms: ligularia dentata, liatris, lobelia, helenium, white-star clematis.    

Daisy. A classic flower name and shape. If you ask a child to draw a flower, this is what you get.

Ligularia dentata, similar format in yellow.

Black-eyed Susan, another variation in yellow.

Ox-eye. Another yellow flower in the same format.

Helenium, also sneezeweed, appears with the other yellow, daisy-like flowers of August.

Bands of green and yellow, form the bottom up--goldenrod, milkweed, maple. Reminds me of a Rothko.

Mid-August.

8-9-21 VERMONT: Time slides by. It’s been over a week without a post or without any rain. We’ve gone from too wet to too dry. The ponds are still full and draining, and the ground hasn’t dried out yet. The days are noticeably shorter, but hot, we’ve been in the eighties almost every day.

We put up an owl nesting box behind the pond on one of the big pines. Now I know that they’re not going to raise new chicks at this point in the season, but it has to go up at some point and will be ready for next year. I had help from Cory, Val and Lucy, and Judy supplied commentary and cautions. It’s actually pretty high up the tree.

Speaking of birds, I was in the pasture looking for butterflies and saw a lot of movement in a clump of milkweed. Too much movement for any insect, so I waited around for several minutes and caught sightings and pix of a new bird for me—common yellowthroat. I also saw a Viceroy butterfly for the first time this year.

After a dump run, I saw that Brown’s was having a perennial sale, and I couldn’t resist. In order to accommodate the new stuff, I made another new bed on the pond bank near the one I had made for the lupin. Lupin seeds that I put in the sand of the new lupin bed have germinated making tiny lupin babies! I feel like a new daddy.

The new bed required digging out the sod, which is very dense and deeply rooted grasses and weeds down to a depth of 6-8 inches. It was a lot of work. I transplanted the sod to a hole in the pasture. The hole I dug out, I filled with a mix of sand and compost and the underlying clay soil. I thought it looked so inviting when I finished that I considered it for a nap of my own. I put five coneflowers, Echinacea purpurea ‘Rudy Star’, and three asters, Aster oblongafolius ‘Raydon’s Favorite’ in the new bed. I dug out another spot on the bank below that bed and transplanted an astilbe that was languishing in the lower new wall bed, it came along with a couple bee balms. 

The next day I planted a hybrid peony next to the hybrid daylily bed at the sunnier end of that bed. It’s hard digging a hole at the base of a tree next to an old stone wall. I spent an hour cutting out roots and levering out rocks to make a decent hole for the peony, Paeonia ITOH  ‘Cora Louise’. After that, it only took five minutes to put a hardy geranium, Geranium x ‘Rozanne’, in the waterfall. I still have a phlox, P. Paniculata ‘ Peppermint Twist’ to find a home for. [Peppermint Twist sounds like a 50’s dance.] 

New blooms: Joe Pye weed, mint, monks hood, Casablanca lily, fleeceflower, big leaf aster, black-eyed Susan. 

Common Yellowthroat. I think I know how it got it's name.

Me, Lucy and Cory after the owl box was put up.

Blanca at the new pond trying to comprehend the concept of 'Frog'.

The lupin babies. The lower, round leaves are the cotyledons. Each seed, of a dicot, makes two cotyledons before starting their own, leaves, specific to their species, like the upper leaf. Monocots, like grass, have a single cotyledon.

Lupin leaves, mature plant, just to remind you what they look like.

Casablanca lily, very big and very aromatic.

In contrast, fleeceflower, a ground cover, has very tiny flowers on a little stalk.

Goldenrod, hallmark of August, comes in several forms.

White turtle head grows by the primrose bed. It's a volunteer and seems very happy in it's spot. We have pink turtlehead elsewhere that won't bloom for another month.

A Fair Day.

8-1-21 VERMONT: Weekend guests Bob and Christine left this morning, they had arrived last Thursday. That night Judy threw a dinner party for B and C and Andy and Cory and Lucy. I grilled the salmon in the afternoon and had made gazpacho the day before. Judy made strawberry shortcake for dessert. Lucy joined Bob after dinner one of his cigars. Friday and Saturday nights we ate at Stone Soup and Candela.

Saturday we went to the North Haverhill Fair for fair food and some events—Powder Puff horse pull, oxen training competition, 4H cows and more. Judy loves the animals, but for me, it’s the food. I had a Bloomin’ Onion, that everybody shared, a sausage with peppers and onions on a roll, and funnel cake. 

Walking with the dogs in the pasture a few days ago, I saw a Monarch caterpillar, first one of the season. It was small, maybe a half inch long and pencil lead thick. I went to look for it again with the camera, but couldn’t find it. For the most part the milkweed has been uneaten, but today I saw some that were significantly chewed up, but couldn’t find any caterpillars. There are monarchs here, but many more fritillaries, who do not use milkweed, but violets, not in the summer, but in the early spring. The caterpillars over-winter on site.

We continue to get lots of rain, 0.9 inches in the last five days. Both ponds are full and draining. 

New blooms: echinacea, white turtlehead, more phlox.  

Echinacea open up just as the native daylilies are finishing.

Teens and young oxen showing how well trained, or not, they are.

The PowderPuff Horse Pull is for women trainers and drivers. Could those short onlookers be related to the driver?

Little trainer, big horse.

Some people can fall asleep anywhere.

Handsome in black and white.

Headed home.