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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.

These tulips were blooming in the park in front of the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, Manhattan side, last week as I went into the city to make some deliveries uptown. The flowers are blooming in our yard too.

It was the beginning of a weekend of beautiful weather ( it’s rainy and cold again today).  There were a number of events on our island but I’ll show photos of that later, this entry is about our tree peony seedlings. Colman planted seeds that formed on the plants we bought;  the seeds take two years to visibly (they don’t show leaves the first year)  germinate and another 4-5 years before they bloom. This first photo is from our Green Dragon in a Pink Pool, it may have been one of the parents of our seedlings. I cut the flower because it had been beaten down by a shower and I wanted to trim the plant back a little too. This particular Chinese hybrid is always the first to bloom.

This next plant was the first of the seedlings to bloom. It has bloomed  three years now and the flowers have gotten better  and more plentiful each year.

The flowers have subtle flares in the center.

The next plant bloomed the first time this year.  It has a strange center and lots of petals.

A very pale pink, almost white flower is blooming its second time in the back yard.  It has a beautiful shape and subtle color.

Our primulas are in full bloom too, These are just outside the back door.

The white primulas are my favorite for their cut edge petals and textured leaves.

I was in the city Friday to go to class at FIT. I bought more copper at Metalliferous and then went back downtown to see Ellen before class. I got out of the subway at 23rd street and walked up Fifth Avenue on the west side of the street through one of the new paved parks that have shown up all over the city on what used to be part of the street. There’s a big one along Madison Square extending the park-like atmosphere beyond the park itself. There, the planters were exuberantly planted with tulips, daffodils and smaller flowering spring bulbs. It made me feel like warmer weather is finally arriving.

Looking across Fifth towards  Madison Square Park.

On the Broadway side of this triangular space a film crew was breaking down after filming.

On Fifth Avenue, one of the fill lights was still turned on.

This is my new hair cut for the summer.

Just a few quick photos of the unusual flowers blooming in the yard. This clump of Dutchman’s Britches  gets larger every year.  It just appeared about 6 years ago. 

These are  Erythronium, commonly known as Trout Lilies. I bought 6 very expensive bulbs about 10 years ago. Only leaves came up for about 3 years, since then they have spread over a large area of the  shady side of the front yard.  There are more flowers each year .  They come and go very quickly. I really like the simple celadon leaves with their  maroon markings.

It was warm enough for Henry top  come outside and help with some of the Spring Clean-up.

It’s been crazy weather here, it’s the first of December and it’s 54 outside, raining and blowing like it was April. My favorite  rhododendron, La Rocaille is in full bloom, yesterday it was joined by an azalea, Sekidera, with a couple of large pink flowers.

It’s supposed to get to 35 in a few days, I still have a little time to get the rest of the abutilons under lights in the basement.

Here are some photos.

Sekidera

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.

On the 14th of this month we went to an opening at the College of Staten Island to attend the opening for an exhibition of Tracey Jones paintings. I was attracted by the invitation image and knew I had to go to see the work. I was not disappointed.  When we arrived there were a number of people already there and a photographer was shooting the show.

Tracey was talking with her friend and I asked if they would stand for a picture.  Colman likes the painting ‘Table’ behind Tracey’s friend.

Here are some shots of the gallery during our visit.

The blue canvas titled ‘Etruria’ was on the invitation.

Behind this trio, the gray canvas, ‘Large Fence’.

Colman talking with Craig Manister, also a painter and supervisor of this gallery at the college.

One of the paintings that I enjoyed seeing,  ’Sign 5′.

As we were leaving, a final shot of the gallery.

The sun was beginning to set on a beautiful Spring day.  These photos were taken just outside of the Center for the Arts buildiing.

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.

Some shots of the yard. Daffodils, chionodoxa, scilla and hellebores. Scattered plants all around the house. Daffodils, chionodoxa, scilla and hellebore. Everything in bloom today. The daffodils were rescued yesterday, we’d had a vigorous rain and wind event  that laid a lot of the new blooms flat, spattered with mud.

Colman at breakfast.

These flowers were blooming in the front yard earlier this week, I think they are seedlings of the pink chionodoxa, whose flowers had yet to open when I took this photo. They are very small, barely over two inches tall.

Scilla is all over the yard.  I planted them in the back first  shortly after we moved in to this house, then a few years later I planted borders of them in the front yard.  They have seeded themselves everywhere, these are by the hatch in the back.

two or three years ago I ordered about 200 chionodoxa bulbs to line the walks in the front.  They were supposed to be blue flowers with white centers and wine colored stems. The suppliers sent the bulbs and I planted them, I was surprised and disappointed when they bloomed pink.  Before they were gone that first spring, I decided that it was a fortuitous error.  There’s already a lot of blue blooming here.

The first honey bee I’ve seen this year.

Hellebores by the back door.

Henry caught scent of something on a Spring breeze.