Who Is This?

Anybody has any idea? I know it is a woodpecker because it is trying to make holes in the tree in our backyard. It does not look like the red-bellied woodpecker as it has a black back; red-bellied's back is like black and white stripes. It also does not have any red belly. I have contacted the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I know woodpeckers are bad for trees but I simply don't have the heart to chase it away.

I also took a video but will post the link later on. It is a HD video and blogger is refusing to upload it..grrrr.....I think I have to compress it.

Okay, while I was writing this up, Cornell told me that it is a Pileated woodpecker. Here is more information about them (click on them or this link: http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/pileated-woodpecker/).  It is also the largest woodpecker in the United States, except the possibly extinct Ivory-billed Woodpecker :-).

Diary of a novice gardener in Boonton-- Beginning -- Part1

I knew nothing about gardening. In fact, my attempt at keeping the house-plants alive during my undergraduate and graduate days usually ended up in disasters. I just knew that I love nature and anything green - small plant, tall plant, bushes, shrubs, weeds, grass, even emerald stones (who told diamond is girl's best friend though I would like to have a diamond to cut and experiment with my rock/stone collections). So, I took full opportunity of our backyard and the ample bright sunshine it gets throughout the year to go out to Garden Centers, Wal-Mart and Home-Depot to buy small plantlings (a term I am coining because they were not seedlings and at the same time not yet fully grown plants, but somewhere in between). I bought tomato, cucumber, eggplant, hot pepper (chili pepper) and green bell pepper (capsicum) plants, onion and garlic bulbs.
[Caption: The left is an eggplant flower; the right is an okra flower].
Of course I bought the plants on whims but then lethargy took hold of me. The plants laid outside on the patio, in their small seed-growing containers, for quite a while. And I sat inside doing research on internet on how to transplant plants from pot to backyard soil, what to do to grow those vegetables and started observing the areas that receive maximum sunshine in the backyard. This is a very important observation to be made and recorded by any gardeners. A gardener has to know which portions of her backyard receives how much sunlight and for how long every day. She then needs to do research on how much sunlight each individual plant needs, on average, every day.
Empowered with all the knowledge, I embarked on planting the plantlings. It was a back-hurting, sweat-producing, extremely tiring job. I gained new respects for all the farmers around the world; for all the farmers in the past whose hard work helped in the flourishing of the human civilization. To have a successful vegetable garden, one needs to clean all the weeds and grasses, till the soil, put fertilizers and prepare and till the soil some more. Then only the plants can be put. But that is not the end of the story. After the plants are put, more fertilizers poured around their base and watered, one needs to keep vigil for plant eating big insects, aphids, snails and re-growth of any weed. Meticulously each insect and snail has to be removed away from each plant (please do not kill them as they are very beneficial for your backyard. Take them away to another part of the backyard, away from your vegetable garden. Why they are beneficial will be part of another diary entry), and all the weeds pulled out. Weeds need to be pulled out because they take away the essential nutrients from the soil and you want to provide as much good food to the plant as possible to make it grow into a healthy fruit producing plant and have a successful garden. However, once the plants are established and have grown tall and have started producing fruits, you do not need to pay so much attention to weeds, contrary to whatever anyone else or the book says. The weeds might actually help in locking the soil moisture and snails and insects will attack the weeds instead of the plants. That has been my experience so far and I am producing good amount of vegetables.
As the plants are transplanted into the backyard, one needs to pay attention to their water requirements. Water-need, fertilizers and soil treatment will be part of future entries.

Boonton Tanks

I guess these are the water tanks of Boonton, not sure though what they are. This is one of the bigger shopping plaza in Boonton. The superstore Walmart, delicious IHOP, Quiznos Subs, Subway, a Pizza Kithchen and other smaller restaurants are located here along with Wine Store, Payless, Salon, etc, etc. The plaza is located on Wooton Street, a busy street in Boonton. Get out of the plaza, turn right, go down and Wooton Stret intersects the Myrtle Avenue, another busy road here. Turn right on Myrtle to go easily to either I-287 or Route 202, all extremely important thoroughfares of New Jersey.

Lamppost

The picture was taken in December when it was cold and snow everywhere. Most (or should I say all) of the lampposts in Boonton look like this and I really love this old-looking lampposts. The lamppost is located on the Washington Bridge and underneath and behind it is the Boonton Water Reservoir. A little history about Boonton from the book Boonton, the Gem of Mountains by Edward J. Cahill :

The natural beauties of Boonton lead many to believe that they were the reasons for its selection for a town site. However, such is not the case; it was the building of the Morris Canal and the iron in the adjacent mountains to the north that led the New Jersey Iron Company to select Boonton as the place to locate its iron works. Boonton dates as a settlement back to 1825, although the first settler of whom we have any knowledge in what is now Boonton was Christian Loweree, who built his little house in 1766 on the side of sunset Hill, where is now the corner of Barnet Street and Woodside Avenue..........The original settlement, called Old Boonton, and located about 500 feet south from the corner of the Washington Street Bridge, the site of which is now 90 feet under the water of the Jersey City Reservoir, was a settlement of over 200 years ago. Old Boonton was first named Boone-Town after Thomas Boone, Governor of the province of New Jersey, 1760, '61, '62 and a friend of David Ogden of Newark, the original owner of the tract.

The above book was original published in 1910.

Spring is Here

Spring is arriving, though we are supposed to have frosts again. But at least it's arrival is being announced by all the new growths on ground and the new buds that are appearing everywhere. Also, the air is fresh and fragrant, vibrating with numerous bird songs.

A typical scene on Cornelia Street

Today it is cloudy and a bit chilly here. But, it doesn't matter if it is snowy, rainy, sunny or cloudy, this part of the cornelia street is all the time calm and quite like this. The most traffic one will have on this street is those of people walking their dogs.

The Thief is Caught Red-Handed

They abound in numbers here in Boonton. In fact, I think more wild animals and birds, than human beings, live in Boonton. Feral and wild cats, deer, bear, opossum, raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, birds like blue-jays, cardinals, chickadees, titmouse, nuthatch, sparrows, doves, woodpeckers, juncos, finches and what not lives here. Who would say that New York City and other metropolitan areas like Jersey City, Newark, Elizabeth are so close by that Booton is almost considered a suburb of NYC. But it is a laid-back, quite, typical American village with a wild river, waterfalls, woods and forest and wild animals. With rising population, I wonder how long it will remain like this?

We have two bird-feeders and the food, often time, goes away quite fast from those two feeders. Then, suddenly one day we solved the mystery. Squirrels come and either stretching their bodies or standing tall they steal the sunflower seeds.

Peas

Forest on Fire or Sunrise?

This is the scene behind our house. The sky takes on different hues of colors and shades, every day, from red to dark purplish, orange to yellow and purplish blue and and what not as the sun rises.

Flow of Life

For the Future Generations

She was waiting for us; or perhaps, we were waiting for her - the old colonial house of 1910 in Boonton, New Jersey?

We were looking into buying our first house in the late spring/early summer of 2009, and had been concentrating on areas that we knew or heard about - Morristown, Dover, Parsippany, Chatham, Madison and Denville. We were not even aware of a town named Boonton in New Jersey. We were almost on the verge of buying a house in Parsippany before it slipped through our fingers. Like the way a bridegroom is being taken, in older conservative cultures, from one house to the other to see, weigh in, admire or reject brides, our realtor was taking us from one house to another, some small, some too big, some with a swimming pool or very little land, and nothing was appealing to us.

Then, we came to see her and behold, it was love in first sight - the charming cosy house, neither too little nor too big with a big lawn at the back, a long driveway and a charming garden and lawn at the front.

Now, we are not only in love with our house, but also with this old and historical town Boonton. So, I am starting this blog with the hope of recording and documenting the present Boonton for future generations to come and learn about us.