More New Plants.

6-29-22 VERMONT: It’s already getting dry again. The days have been pleasant and the nights cool, great except for lack of rain. I continue to be busy with chores. Today I did a pond treatments to both ponds, fertilized the tomatoes and herbs, pruned the viburnum by the dining room window, watered, walked around the pasture with Judy and the dogs, and it makes a full day, adding in the frequent rests.

Yesterday Addie was here and transplanted some of the hydrangeas near the driveway that were encroaching on the bed by the French doors to the east bank of the pond. There were six clumps, all looking the worse for wear. They all need lots of watering. In the afternoon, Judy and I went to Gardeners Supply and got anemones to fill the spot where the hydrangeas were. Two were ‘Pink Saucer’, Anemone hupehensis, one Anemone x ‘Pamina’ and one A. ‘Sweetly’. I also put a phlox, P. paniculata ‘David’ in the same bed. We got two pink turtleheads, Chelone lyonii ‘Hot Lips’ that Addie put in the dining room window bed after she pulled all the ferns out. I put another ligularia in the porch bed, L. ’Desdemona’.  

New blooms: catalpa tree, baptisia, false indigo.

Look who we saw on the road at a neighbor's house. Actually we've seen her/him a few times.

Addie and I working on the hydrangea transplants.

False Indigo shrub flower. Amorpha fruticosa.

A Little Night Rain.

6-27-22 VERMONT: It finally rained last night and this morning. We got 0.6 inches, we need more, but it’s a start. The weekend was very hot, but not too humid. Today is very humid and still overcast. I haven’t done much these last few days—either too hot or too wet.

Before that, I did some pruning and watering. I saw the small turtle again as well as a big one. The Baltimore oriole has been around, so I put out the oriole feeder, maybe they will be interested this year. A hairy woodpecker and a rose-breasted grosbeak have been at the feeders along with the usual customers. 

New blooms: daylily, lychnis, red spirea, fever few, filipendula. 

Daylilies usually open on July 1, but this year 6/23/22, a week early.

These are my favorite peonies. They're singles, and they're the last to open.

The roses continue to dazzle.

Nice sky last night at sunset.

A nuthatch making off with a sunflower seed.

A rose-breasted grosbeak, notice the red under the wings.

This is a female hairy woodpecker. She is almost a dead-ringer for the downy woodpecker that I showed earlier in posts from NJ. This one is much bigger and has a more substancial beak. The males of both species have red caps.

Baltimore oriole, male, in the dawn redwood tree. He was following a fledgling.

Baltimore oriole again, carrying food for the kids. This is on the other side of the yard.

Windy and Cold.

6-22-22 VERMONT: For several days it’s been cold and windy with 30 mph gusts. There have been brief showers, with less than a half inch of rain, and everything is dry, even though today was rainy. The upper pond is down a foot and showing muddy banks. The lower pond is down an inch or two. I saw a very small turtle, shell the size of a silver dollar, sunning on the ledge for an afternoon, so that means at least two turtles in the pond.  

Daytime temps are in the sixties, and it drops into the fifties at night. We have built fires every evening, and are hoping for some summer weather.

I have pruned, weeded, watered and found lots of chores to do. A visit to Brown’s Nursery resulted in a bunch of work planting new stuff. I have been using the pond bank for new beds, it gets full sun. The problem is the grass and wild flowers and weeds that grow there are so thick and dense that any new plant doesn’t have a chance to survive. Unless, I dig out what’s there down to six or eight inches, fill the hole with potting soil and plant in that new bed. I can re-use some of the turf, but most of it gets chucked.

I made a cluster of three beds on the bank near the big apple tree. First I planted seven perennial poppies, Papaver orientale, two ‘Royal Wedding’, two ‘Beauty of Livermore’, and one each of ‘Princess Victoria Louise’, ‘Prince of Orange’ and ‘Pizzicato’. Three of them have seed pods not yet ripe, they were all post flowering for this year. I may supplement the bed with more seeds. The second bed has two Lobelia cardinalis, cardinal flower. That bed is close to the water, lobelia like wet feet. The last bed has one Baptisia, ‘Plum Rosy’. I also planted two small Monarda, ‘Rockin Raspberry’, one in the bed below the deck and one in the north chimney bed. Those two were much easier, I just plugged them into existing beds. My mid-eighties work style is dig a little, rest a little, dig a little, rest more—it’s slow going. 

New blooms: bishops weed, water lily, sweet William, diablo.

 

It's peony season, the cold weather may slow them down, but they still bloom.

A darker pink.

Bright red. These are all double flowers. The single flowers are just starting.

The roses that grow on the fence are almost at peak. The pond is in front and two barns are in the pasture beyond the fence.

Eastern Phoebe, named for its call, has raised a nestful on the light bulb fixture by the wood shed. It's sheltered from the rain and wind, but works better when we're not here. There are plenty of bugs for her to catch for the brood and herself.

The Summer Begins.

6-16-22 VERMONT: We’re here for the summer, hopefully, no emergencies until September. Yesterday was hot, and we had a little rain overnight, 0.2 inches. There was 2.75 inches in the gauge when we arrived—not bad for two weeks. 

Yesterday was unloading the cars and looking around, unpacking, opening the house, etc. Today we ran errands, shopped for food, bought bird seed, picked up two little vases Judy bought at auction, collected the mail. 

After we got home, I did some urgent weeding and watched the birds. We still have the Baltimore oriole here and the usual feeder birds and a sapsucker pair in the willow tree, lots of robins. The robin nest with the two eggs hatched the morning we left NJ. The hatchlings are the most dependent-looking babies, it’s hard to believe that they will be flying around in a couple weeks. I also saw two new butterflies.

New blooms: valerian, anemone, buttercup, stephanandra, weigela, irises—flag, Siberian, bearded, knapweed, centaurea—blue, white, meadow rue, Itoh peony, peony, chive, geranium, astrantia, roses—on the fence and in the terrace beds, Asian lilac, bridal wreath spirea, tradescantia, lady’s mantle, goat’s beard, dianthus, thyme. 

Itoh peony 'Cora Louise' was planted last summer and bloomed now. Most of the others we planted this year are yellow.

Conventional peony, not bad either.

The lupin seem to like their new spot on the pond bank.

Blanca has tired of harassing the frogs in the pond and collapsed on the dam to admire the brook filled with primrose and more.

The terrace beds with pink rose bushes.

The pasture fence with rose bushes starting their show.

Butterfly named 'Red-spotted Purple'.

Turns out that this buttrerfly is a moth 'Virginia ctenucha'. That is not misspelled.

Eastern Phoebe, newly fledged, after a bath.

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, male, the female has less red.

Weekend Visit from J & S.

6-13-22 SHORT HILLS: I have been doing lots of garden chores, including transplant of a bleeding heart from VT to NJ. I have some in NJ, but they never make seeds and so don’t spread. The ones in VT have spread widely in the yard there and are welcome almost every where. I potted one from VT and brought it to NJ. After a couple weeks of adjusting to the pot and doing well, I transplanted it today. It didn’t come out of the pot well and partly fell apart, but I think out will be OK. 

We had a weekend visit from Jon and Siobhan. We did dinners at Lorena’s and Serenade. We went to the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. Mostly we hung out at home and talked about what’s happening in their, our and the boys lives and a trip we all might do to Santa Fe. 

Later this week we go back to VT for the summer.

New blooms: southern magnolia, catalpa tree, hydrangea.

A southern magnolia flower. They are big and showy and last for three days, first day they begin to open, second day they fully open, third day they turn brown. One or two open each day for a month or so. They draw a lot of pollinators.

Catalpa tree flowers. The trees open bunches of these flower clusters. If they're pollinated, the fruit is a long seed pod that kids call 'cigars', but they're not legumes.

This robin, in a viburnum, on our patio has three or four nestlings that have fledged.

Here's three babies, still with spotted breasts, before they left the nest.

The other robin still has two eggs still getting incubated.

A gray catbird in the yard with a nest somewhere here.

At the swamp refuge, a red-wing blackbird male with a beak full of caterpillars for the kids.

Also at the swamp, a pair of tree swallows.

The Sex Lives of Trees.

6-4-22 SHORT HILLS: Who says garden reporting isn’t titillating? We have a sex orgy involving thousands happening in the yard right now.

Holly trees are either male or female as and the gender can be seen in the flowers. Since we have at least a dozen English hollies, mostly volunteers from the original three in the yard. Those three, two females and one male, are all forty to fifty feet tall, and the females are usually covered with red berries in November. Last year a flock of twenty or so robins landed on one while migrating and ate every berry. That’s what they’re for. The pollinating requires bugs, mostly bees to go from tree to tree. I have shown these flowers every year, this year you, dear reader, will have to identify which is which.

Speaking of robins, we have two nesting very close to the house. The one that I can look down into from upstairs has two blue/green eggs.

New blooms: mock orange, Stewartia.

One of the holly trees. Is it male or female?

The other holly sex, which?

A very nice construction with two eggs in a yew tree next to the front door.

The same nest with an incubating bird.

The other nest close to the den door over the terrace.