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.