tree update

Utterly failing to keep up and make timely notes ever, the lifestyle~

Just moved 4 of the 5 Indian plums i planted this spring from the native plant sale; the only one that was thriving was the one completely under the shade of the maple. The others were all sad little sticks with withered leaves. But they're not dead, so I moved them into shadier spots and watered them and hopefully they'll perk up a bit. Will have to remember to water them more often so they can get established.

I'm honestly not doing very well at getting a vegetable garden going this year, but I'm at least making some progress on the front. And I do have a few things to set out in the garden soon, including crookneck squash, paste tomatoes, and my tiny soviet melons.

The apple tree has loads of tiny fruit on it this year, after not setting any last year, so that's a good sign for pollination. The quince had lovely blossoms but is setting no fruit at all. The cherry is going to need bird netting any day now as its loads of green fruit start turning red. The peach has a terrible case of leaf curl and may not make it. The mulberry is young but beautiful.

Also I recently planted a madrona, because I love them dearly, and here's hoping it survives; they apparently are very hard to transplant and cope badly with any disturbance of the root system. But maybe!!!

I'm tired a lot of the time, whether that's the comfortable physical exhaustion of "just raked up and hauled 15 gallons of camellia petals back to the fledgling compost pile" or the less comfortable emotional exhaustion of being lonely and wishing my stuck-in-another-time-zone roommate could come home. But the year keeps moving, and things keep growing, whether I have the energy to properly pay attention or not.

The asparagus is determined to live, and I am rooting for it.

Three of the four pear varieties on the tree are blooming by now; this picture was taken a few days ago when the very first buds were unfolding.

And the central trunk of my pie cherry is blossoming as determinedly as it knows how.

I'll be removing the spent blossoms from all the fruit trees this year, so the plants focus on getting established instead of trying to find the energy for fruit. It feels like there's a metaphor in there somewhere, maybe for coping with depression, maybe for the first year of homeownership, maybe both. Whatever, it's a metaphor with room for cherry blossoms. That makes it a good one.

first tree to blossom?

Empress dwarf peach!

Tiny as they are, these guys are thinking about blooming! Pear first, then peach. What pretty little things.

The fig might be joining them (I mean, I hope it is, given its maturity). It's such a pretty time of year.

I might have a problem

I don't think I'm patient enough for this plant-growing stuff. I keep going to grab more things and stick them in the dirt when the existing ones aren't doing things yet. (did you know garbanzo beans come in black? now you do.)

Have some photos from this past weekend:

Frankenpear! I am a little worried about this guy. Ok, not about this part exactly, but you see all those nice fat buds getting ready to open?

Here's a different angle where you can see the one branch (up front) that is lagging way behind. It's the variety that got grafted on right at the top, and I suspect that means it's getting the last share of nutrients coming up from the roots, so it's a little slow and sad. This winter I will have to read up on caring for combination trees and keeping varieties in balance. (The apple has the opposite problem; the Gravenstein branch wants to outperform all the others.)

Ground work

I've seen advice from a few people suggesting that one of the things you should plan to do in the first year of a new homestead is planting whatever fruit trees you want to grow there -- they're a long-term project, so you want to put the trees to work doing their growing business as soon as possible. And by happy coincidence, I moved into my new place about a month before the growing season starts around here. (Mind you, it goes slowly for the first month or two, when the days aren't so long yet and the weather is still cool and rainy. But it's started! Things are blooming! This is important.)

So one of the first things I did was place an order with Raintree Nursery. Okay, no, the FIRST thing was to browse their entire catalog as if it were some esoteric cross between archaeological discovery and porn. ("aaaahh, those blueberries look so goooood," and "I could grow medlars! I don't even know what a medlar is!" and so on.) But eventually I sat down with my new roommate and picked out a variety of trees, some that were actually planned and some that were excitable impulse buys ("Paw paws! I've always wanted to eat a paw paw!").