Jenny Jump State Park

Last summer my husband and my daughter went on a weekend trip to Jenny Jump State Park, camping and hiking with some friends. My husband has been spending a weekend camping with some of these friends at various New Jersey (and occasionally New York and Pennsylvania) state parks and forests for almost twenty years, taking our children since they were toddlers. The Parker family is often part of the group, and every year John Parker sends us some of his beautiful photos. There are always photos of the children, and of the whole party at the most interesting parts of their hike, or the most scenic spots, or the highest places they climbed. This year there were some beautiful photos of the park, and I want you to see them and start planning a trip to Jenny Jump State Park for this year. From Montgomery it is a drive of an hour and a half, so you can just go for an afternoon.

The first two photos are the beautiful views from a lookout point.

All the other pictures are lovely things seen along the trail. John says that he likes to photograph "wildflowers and dead trees and things people usually don't notice as they pass by."

The third photo is the woods the hikers walked through, and the fourth is a boulder in the woods.

The fifth photo is a snake found beside the trail. This was very unusual and exciting, and it is not poisonous, so if you are afraid of snakes don't let this discourage you from visiting the park.

The sixth photo shows Virginia creeper and native grasses growing around a rock outcrop. The seventh features the berries of Virginia creeper, blue with red stems. Virginia creeper is a beautiful plant, under-appreciated here in the US, but often planted to grow on stately homes in Europe.

The eighth photo shows the beautiful fall color of red maple leaves, with a few heart-leaf aster flowers and leaves in the background. Next you see partridge berry, a slow-growing native groundcover, in the ninth photo.

Last of all is a picture of a face in a tree trunk. I think it looks friendly, but others may see a different expression.

Thanks for the pictures, John!

Save Energy at Home

Winter is one time of the year when I can't help thinking about energy. I can even hear the furnace working and the pipes in the walls heating up. New Jersey has a great program to help you save energy at home, and you can even save money saving energy.

Visit this website:
http://www.njcleanenergy.com/residential/programs/home-performance-energy-star/home-performance-energy-star-r
to learn about New Jersey's Board of Public Utilities' Home Performance with Energy Star program.

I learned about this program at an energy workshop that Montgomery and Hillsborough Townships sponsored last winter at the Hillsborough Library. It starts with a home energy audit, worth $300, which only costs you $125. It took my husband and me quite a while to get an appointment for an audit, because this is such a great program that there is a lot of demand for audits! We finally had the audit last spring, and it was very interesting. It took about three hours, and at the end we were given a report, telling what we could do to make our home more energy efficient. All the items were chosen for cost efficiency, and the resulting energy savings were estimated. Also, state subsidies and federal tax credits were identified--that's one of the ways you can save money by saving energy.

Some of the suggested projects were ones we didn't want to do, such as knock many holes in our newly-painted plaster walls to blow in insulation. However, there were many other projects to choose from. Then we interviewed three certified contractors, who gave us estimates for the work. Some of them were more experienced than others, and had advice for us on what would work best in our old house. All of these companies are very busy, so it was months before we could get the work done.

Next came the hard part--moving everything out of the closets in our attic so they could be insulated. My husband did most of the work, but I still thought it was a pain. I reminded myself many times that I could complain about it on this blog. We even found some things we don't need any more, and we are still trying to give them away. Need any decorator fabric scraps, anyone? (Don't ask)

We got a new burner and boiler (equivalent of a furnace) and hot water heater in our basement, and new digital thermostats on three floors (now if only we could figure out how to program them!). Next other contractors came. Their first job was a blower test. They close up all the windows and doors except one door, into which they fit an adjustable door with a blower, and see how hard the fan has to blow to suck the air out of the house. That is sort of a measure of how many tiny cracks and gaps are in the house. Then they set to work sealing and filling those little cracks and gaps. They sealed cracks around the windows in the basement and insulated the basement ceiling. They insulated gaps at the top of the basement walls, so air couldn't circulate from the basement to the attic or the attic to the basement. (Later we got a radon test to make sure our radon levels were still OK). They also insulated all those closets in the attic. Then they repeated the blower test, and checked to make sure the improvements were in the neighborhood of the predictions from the initial audit.

Then we had to move everything back into the attic closets. That was a pain, but when the December heating bill arrived, we could already see the improvement! The savings in energy costs will take a few years to pay us back for the work that was done, but the subsidies and tax credits made it several years fewer than it could have been. And what better investment can you think of these days?