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not a parking spot but wisteria in bloom. Checking my files, other years and different locations it would be mid-May.
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Friday, 25 April 2025
Looping around Frenchtown, looking for a parking place convenient to the pharmacy. Circling on Second Street I found
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not a parking spot but wisteria in bloom. Checking my files, other years and different locations it would be mid-May.
What a difference a day (or three) makes. Here are more flowers by the old stone house just three days later.
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A double pink flowering cherry, about two weeks later than the others I have seen in bloom. It might possibly be 'Kwanzan'.
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And lilacs. This is clearly an older cultivar - single, purple, fragrant. Not one of the "modern" double, odd color, no scent.
Which would you prefer?
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Daffodils, mass groupings plopped in the lawn. One has gone over. Not photogenic. This one, at least, is in peak bloom.
Tuesday, 22 April 2025
The first, the earliest flowers are foreigners. Little bulbs from abroad - snowdrops and crocus that winter away underground to awaken using food reserves stored for multiple months since they went dormant. It is truly astonishing that a few weeks of green leaves, active growth, are sufficient balance against multiple months, three seasons, of dormancy. So it goes. And the first native flowers also rely on underground storage, having independently developed the same technique of bulbs and tubers. e
This year the dogtooth violets, Erythronium americanum, are fantastic. Masses of them
spilling down the slopes at the edge of Tinsman Road, and Creek Road. More than I can
recall in previous years. Where did the "dogtooth" part of their common name come from?
The hidden underground food storage bulbs. Here, the bulbs of a garden cultivar on a 1-inch grid.
Some think two-spurred flowers of Dutchman's breeches have
a fanciful resemblance to pantaloons hung on a laundry line.
A spring ephemeral, going dormant often less than two months
after showing up. The clustered little tubers easily separate,
a simple means of propagation for this dainty wildflower.
There were only a few bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis, so named
for the orange red sap that oozes from broken leaf, stem, or tuber.
There is an old stone house on Ridge Road. Apparently it was built in 1850. There are groups of
daffodils in the front lawn but I am sure they were planted much more recently than 175 years ago.
Grass is mowed. But weeds are not evicted. Off to the side of the property mugwort
stems remain from last year, brown and brittle. None the less the daffodils push up,
even where the aggressive woody vines of wisteria, their buds just swelling, take over.
Wednesday, 16 April 2025
Daffodils are everywhere. Sturdy, reliable, ignored by deer. Narcissus 'Jetfire' on Ridge Road.
Flowering quince, Chaenomeles japonica, beautifully in flower on Harrison Street.
Purple house. Purple Rhododendron 'PJM' on Route 12 Frenchtown-Flemington Road
Not much snow. Don't remember severe cold. But winter's end has revealed some disruptions.
The bamboo at the bottom of our driveway has turned all brown. And not just here.
As I've been driving here and there, not necessarily close to home, it is everywhere.
Flowers clusters of lily of the valley shrub, Pieris japonica, are almost completely damaged.
But forsythia is just fine. Saucer magnolias have only minor browning. Very puzzling.
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Thursday, 10 April 2025
If you have any comments or questions, you can e-mail me: jgglatt@gmail.com
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