Up early for more apple tree pruning
rock garden fence
Well, there’s more pruning ahead for the next several days: the weather should be nice, and I’m somewhat looking forward to it. It causes a good kind of fatigue, and the knowledge that I’m slowly regaining strength, in advance of the planting/weeding/landscaping that needs to go on here. It’s strenuous, but less so than digging (we have very rocky soil, and it usually goes better if you alternate between a shovel and a pick axe). We’re also getting a lot of usable wood for the remaining sections of the cottage fence around the pond & flower gardens.
Most of that post work is seasoned apple tree limbs, and some cherry tree limbs, as well. The trees are all getting pretty old, and since we don’t use pesticides, we periodically struggle with some of the diseases that come through, especially in overly-moist years, like the last two have been.
The additional benefit of getting up into the trees is getting my mind off my impending math class at BU (I hate math), and the medieval condition of my stupid, expensive teeth. 
We’re really hoping that all this pruning work restores the trees to bearing. With the disappearance of honey bees in our area, as well as the trees’ venerable ages, it’s difficult to know for sure what they’re up to, and whether pruning will help them at this point. Oh well, we can always use them as graft material for new trees, if this doesn’t work out.
Apple tree overload
It’s March. The ground is a freezing slurry of snow, slush and mud, and is slippery as hell. Not the greatest surface to run around on, toting a saw, but hey…that’s March.
Although the chainsaw is back, I was impatient to get started today, and just went at it with the handsaw, and got a lot of the big branches down. Hopefully, pruning helps rejuvenate the trees, as they’re not yielding anymore: if they don’t set fruit after all this work, we’ll have to dig them up & start with new trees next year. Fingers crossed it doesn’t come to that.
As much as I’d like to be hiking around in the hills right now, the mud season will keep my enthusiasm in check…why not be up in a tree?
My Dad’s Pet Fig Trees
real food challenge
my awesome cousin