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I know it’s late and I have a backlog of photos to put into the blog. There are a couple of drafts that are approaching a first year’s birthday waiting to be posted. I will try for the next few days to get some of these online so that I can retire the photos to a disk somewhere outside my hard drive.

Our Ken Janek rhododendron was spectacular. All the plants this year seem to be blooming with numbers of flowers above and beyond all expectations. There’s only a close up of the KenJanek.

I cut one of the May Apples to have inside. The white flower developed these translucent windows in the water in the vase.  Don’t know if this is a usual development as the flower ages.

These are two of my seedling azaleas.  Geisha was one of the parents,  these are planted where we buried Max, he used to sleep under these plants on summer nights.

Bill and Mary started to  replace their fence last year.  The Montana rubens clematis was undisturbed and bloomed very well. It has climbed to the top of one of Bills  conifers next door and the tree is also covered with the vanilla scented flowers.

My primulas put on a nice show too.

Joker (azalea) and an azalea  whose name we have forgotten blooming with Gordon Jones.

The Azalea Joker.

This is  Rhododendron Gordon Jones. It has been languishing in the back garden for years, it is finally putting on a show of its large and marked flowers.

The rhododendron Grumpy has finally bloomed in the correct season.  In the past we have had mild Novembers and Grumpy would bloom just before Thanksgiving thinking (?) it was Spring. Even in the Fall it never bloomed this well.

This peony, Cytheria is an unusual and luminous color. I cut two stems to have inside and protect the blossoms from some predicted heavy rains.

Toward the end of May our Nathan Hale  Kalmia started to bloom. You’ll see more of this when it’s fully opened.

Inside, I have been concerned with wire work for wine cup stems.

We had a mixed bag of weather this weekend. A beautiful Saturday and torrential downpour on Sunday. There’s water in the basement. It rained Monday too and I stayed inside to finish work I wanted to deliver and show today. The Lion Cup is done, I intend to have a mold made so that we can have it electro formed in a variety of metals and finishes.
Her are two shots.

I went into the city today to buy gold leverbacks for a pair of earrings to go along with the necklace I finished yesterday.  The beads are carnelian, they alternate in a chain with 9-10 mm freshwater pearls. The necklace is just under 20″ long, all the wire and findings are 14kt gold, I soldered and forged the hook clasp.  It’ll be available on my website soon, as a set for $350. Or you can email me at colsage@earthlink.net

The Azaleas are blooming out of sequence this year because of the little heat wave we had a few weeks ago and the prolonged cool weather we are having now.

My cross between an Exbury and  a Ghent hybrid  azalea is having a banner year. I love the color which is more subtle than here in the photograph. You’ll see the whole bush in the pans of the garden at the bottom of this entry.

The Ken Janek Rhododendrons are also blooming in a strange way this year.  In the past the blooms all were together, the bush showing pink buds and then with the flowers opening the intense pink was all gone. This year some flowers are opening  and some buds are delayed so that we have a real splash of mixed color.  Colman thinks it’s because the plants are sensitive to the microclimates around each bush; sunny branch, cool pocket, warm draft.

In the front the Sekidera Azalea in blooming. The flowers are very nice and large, but the bush itself looks wretched most of the year. I cut it back severely last year and it started to look better, I’ll do the same this year after it finishes blooming, that is if it doesn’t continue to rain like it has the past few weeks.

Here are two pan shots of the back yard, one dappled with sunlight when I got home today around 4:30 and then again a little later as the sun got behind clouds. You can see my glowing, orange azalea in front of the greenhouse. The red azalea on the left in the shade pan is Girard’s Scarlet, the one in the center is Silver Sword, called that because the leaves are variegated with white edges.

About 15 years ago I was hybridizing with azaleas. We had clipped and rooted cuttings from a friend’s collection in Lederach Pennsylvania. He had a wonderful collection of Japanese azaleas that I used to make my crosses. These seedlings from that time are crosses that were made with a variety called Geisha. It has single white flowers splashed with stripes and spots of bright pink. Geisha is still growing in our garden and it is usually the first azalea to bloom each spring. The whole bush can be seen in yesterday’s entry, the first photo.

The seedlings in the following photos are most likely a cross of Florence Waldman and Geisha. Florence Waldman was a hybrid  from Roslyn Nurseries on Long Island, one of the only American hybrids to have stripes and spots. While it had beautiful flowers there in Long Island, it performed poorly here in Staten Island, the buds came early and were often blasted by late frosts. Crossing it with Geisha, which has similar coloring, gave us plants with larger flowers that perform much better and reliably in our garden.

This first hybrid is outside near the back yard door, it’s one of the small bushes that Max used to sleep under on summer nights. The flowers are larger than Geisha. A strange thing about the seedlings is that all of them, at least the ones that survived some neglect for a number of years, have hose-in-hose flowers, that is to say the blooms are two azalea flowers, one inside the other.

The second seedling has more substance and color, the petals are more ruffled rather than rounded like the first seedling.

Primulas are blooming in the bed closest to the deck, there are more in pockets all around the back yard, but this is the main part of the collection.

I am especially fond of these white  flowers with the cut edges, I think I bought them on 28th street about 5 years ago.

I got these yellow  primulas a few years ago to replace some that just weren’t surviving very well.  The types I like come from higher altitudes and don’t like it much here at near sea level.

These came from our friend, Bud, in Lederach too, in his garden they are in an abundant array in a border and along a path that leads to his azalea collection.

The painters have been here most of the week, the front door couldn’t be used as usual and we had to walk to the front by going around the house from the kitchen. Spent the early part of the last weeks days moving abutilons out of the basement so we could finally turn the lights off down there.

Walking around to the front,  the ephemeral arabis flowers were blooming. It’s been cooler than usual this year; that coupled with the mini heat wave a week or so ago, has made a lot of our plants bloom early and stay fresh longer. The rhododendrons are on time but the azaleas are already showing color, if it had been a little warmer they would all be open today. Here are two rhododendrons with Japanese Geisha, an early azalea on the right.

We were driving around Staten Island this morning with our friend Diana who  introduced us to places we should have known about and visited for the past twenty years. We took her to the store on which I’ve been working with Friends of Fire (we will have a Grand Opening May 8-9), it’s been a lot of fun and we’ve met some nice people. Just one shot of a new arrangement at  the store. (you can see more photos of the store in my FaceBook Album)

The striking visual thing about our drive today was that the cool weather this week has slowed the passing of many of Staten Island’s blooming trees.  There are a LOT;  flowering almonds are in peak bloom everywhere, forsythia, crab apples and red buds color every road.  It seems that part of mayor Bloomberg’s Million Trees Project includes redbuds, there are streets lined with them.

Here’s a shot of my arabis before the rain last Thursday night.

And a view of the path from the back to the front. I shot this about twenty minutes ago, the arabis is still looking good.

Fritillaria melegaris, ‘Checkered  Lilies’, have naturalized in the front border.  I think it’s unusual for the white flowers to do better  than the colored varieties, they out number the maroon flowers.

All the porch furniture had to be stacked in the yard while they were working last week.

One of the treads being cleaned and trimmed.

Colman on the porch with some of the carpenter’s tools.

Trevor on the right with his Dad, a family carpentry business.

All new risers, the old ones had rotted edges.

Today the porch is finished and the paint has cured. I began to move some of the furniture back into place and hang new chains for the plants.

Some more Spring flowers.

Ipheion, attractive and fragrant, it’s also invasive. . . the leaves last until July, dying off  (so you can plant annuals over them), reapperaing in late October to grow in the pale winter sunlight.

A close-up of some Rhodies in the back yard.

And Henry keeps us company where ever we go.

Saturday started with the arrival of a crushed box from Florida,  a plant I had ordered  online  was here in just about no time. Here’s the photo from the web.  There had been an email notice that it was on sale,  it was sort of like paying full price and getting free shipping.  The plant is more than 2 feet tall with wavy edged, arrow shaped, lax, very fleshy, succulent,  green leaves.  It’s in bud. . .  Traveling so fast did it some harm, but I think it should recover.  It’s name is Synandrospadix vermitoxicus,  does that mean it’s poisonous to mice?

This weekend was the first of two weekends that Art By the Ferry took place. It will run next weekend too. Colman and I got out early (for us), picked up our art works from the Staten Island Museum and found a parking place in the no-space-for-cars-land of St George. Walking toward the spaces where the art was being shown, we ran into so many people we knew that it was some time before we got to see any of the art. For those of you who don’t know what this event is, it’s a mass showing of hundreds of artworks and performances ( musical and words) by the artists, craftsmen, musicians and writers who live on this (larger than Manhattan ) island. It’s a great opportunity to see and hear a really wide range of works in a lot of different mediums. The art work is displayed in a number of buildings behind the Borough Hall on Stuyvesant Street all the way to a warehouse that we calla Fish’s Eddy (for the last tenant) toward Stapleton on Bay Street. I didn’t take many photos. Most of the people we knew were moving too fast that early in the morning.  Here is a photo of our friend Irma, who is known for her photography, (displayed in another space), she’s showing some of her jewelry here.

This is Denise with some of her work in the left background. 

The weather couldn’t have been better. It was nice to see a lot of our friends in person, in the open air, a lot of us are on FaceBook  so we have an idea of what we are doing but FB isn’t like actually seeing the work or as pleasant as being able to talk face to face.

As we were heading back to the car,  I noticed this hole in the sidewalk. it , at one time must have held a post of some sort.  A lot of alianthus seeds had germinated filling it with a bright green salad of leaves.  the photo is about life size. 

I spent most of today sewing books for a client, the telephone rang quite a bit too.  I took breaks to go outside to tend my  abutilon seedlings and see the the new flowers. This is a mid season azalea, Full Moon.  We bought it because  of the large white flowers and because the bush produces flowers in three  different  colors;  pure white, white broken with salmon (or solid salmon) and a picotee pink with a flare.  The leaves are a beautiful glossy green. 

This is the first day the martagon lilies opened.  We bought one bulb a long time ago, it’s the only martagon we have been able to keep. We don’t dare move it , once martagons are happy  in a place you let them stay there.  Last year there were two stems.  It’s martagon dalhansonii. 

This azalea is a seedling from one of my crosses done about 10 years ago,  it has a compact form and varied flowers. Most of my other seedlings are salmon colored late season plants. 

Henry is a constant shadow where ever we go. 

Walking on near Astor Place on  East 10th Street, the first street I lived on in New York, I arrived at the corner of Third Avenue and looked South. There is so much construction now, this crane stood out, raising another tower, following, in time, the windswept glass building south of it.  

I picked up the gift of a polishing machine from a friend on the Bowery, on the way to Mike’s loft I passed this doorway. Decorative metal work has become prominent in the things I notice these days, I’d change a few things in this composition but I think it’s still a nice piece of work.  

Last weekend we finally had sunlight and moderate temperatures. The trees had even taken a vacation from dropping something all over the yard. (That’s another story, maybe later. . .) School was finished for a week so Colman and I decided, since we had purchased the materials, we should get on to cleaning and waterproofing the deck. The cleaner wasn’t changing it much, it was probably because the directions said we should use 1200 pounds of water pressure to remove the cleaner, our hose wasn’t doing much.  Gary, our next door neighbor came over to see what we are doing, whenever there is some maintenance taking place, Gary likes to visit and give help. He offered his water pressure machine and after some discussion we accepted. The effect was surprising and easy to do, the jet of water removed 3 years of soot and algae that had given the deck a pleasing antiqued appearance. I wasn’t too happy about that but now, a week later, I feel good about it, it’s almost like having a new deck. This is the way the deck looked as we were cleaning the top surface.  

Inside the studio I finished an edition of grass cloth covered boxes that are to be used to deliver invitations. In this photo they are almost finished. 

On the way delivering the boxes I passed Madison Square on 5th Avenue, I stopped for a moment to take  a progress photo of the new tower going up on 23rd Street. The glass skin has started to be installed, in the clear bright day, wind ruffled the protective paper covering like that dry skin we have after being sunburnt.   

The anthuriums are finally all outside, this blossom on Sara has been expanding in the bindery for over a month. It’s one of the largest blooms this plant has produced so far, it’s more than 10 inches wide. 

In the front yard our Full Moon Azalea has started to bloom. All of the flowers are about 3 inches in diameter, the bush produces three types of colored flowers,  a pure white, a pink flared bloom with white edges and blossoms with broken coloring usually in streaks and spots. This bloom is unusual in that the coloring is half and half, like a half moon. 

Later in the week we went to the Edison Mall in New Jersey to buy shoes and visit the book store. It’s a beautiful mall, Summer has already arrived there. 

Saturday we went to visit our friends Bob and Patti in Pennsylvania. It was a cold overcast day but we had a good time going through Bob’s Greenhouse, visiting with other plant friends who came from Philadelphia and then later talking with Bob and Patti in their living room. 

Sunday was much a brighter better day. The rhododendrons in the front and side yard are performing beautifully.

In the side yard, our redbud is in full bloom along with the Ken Janeck rhododendron.

The first dwarf black iris bloomed this weekend. More will follow.

A japanese tree peony by the front walk, one of several flowers on the bush..

My Purple Velvet Smoke tree peony is blooming by the back terrace. The camera never gets this flower color right, it’s much a darker, almost black-maroon.

On the edge of the piano bed, one of my azalea seedlings, Elizabeth Wilson, named for my mother, is starting to bloom. It’s about 10 years old now and I should propagate it.

Near the Elizabeth Wilson azalea, Dream, another azalea, along with a rhododendron, Gordon Jones is in full bloom.  

This is a close up of Gordon Jones, this plant took a LONG time to establish itself. It’s only been blooming well the last 2 years, I think we planted it about 15 years ago. 

Over the years Colman has pollinated our tree peonies and planted a few of the seeds. This is a first bloom on one of the seedlings, I think it turned out well and we’ll look forward to next year when it should have more flowers. This plant is about 3 years old. 

Inside, in the late afternoon, the sun cast an unusual reflection from the studio into the entrance hall. It lit my sculpture and the collection of glass and pots on the shelf above out mantel. 

Colman is painting a lot, he’s started to work on small canvases. This one is of a net, it’s photographed on my work bench.