Cat Help...

Summer is finally here, maybe!

We seem to have gone straight from Winter to Summer, no Spring at all. It was nice and sunny this weekend, though - close to 80 degrees, so I spent most of both days outside: mowing, hoeing, weeding, and feeding. Lucciano helped by finding a shady spot in the flowers and napping. Happy kitty, he was.

Last week it was still cold and the ground was still much to soggy to plant my corn. I usually wait until June first to do that anyway - the ground just isn't warm enough, and the seeds won't germinate... they'll rot. This year it has been so cold and wet that two of the "Pick-Your-Own" farms near me are saying they have only 10-20 % of their usual Pear and Cherry crop on the trees this year! Apparently, if the weather isn't nice (not 52 and rainy, anyway) after the fruit sets, the fruit doesn't develop properly and just falls off the trees. I thought it was just my old pear trees giving up the ghost, but I guess that is what is happening this year. Miserable fruit set because of the weather. We won't be letting even any of the windfalls go waste this year, that's for sure!

Oh, Yeah! Great news...all five of my newly grafted "baby" apple trees took! Five new apple trees to go into the ground in the Fall. Not bad for the first time I've grafted fruit trees. The beginning of my renovated orchard and I'm pretty excited about it. I have four more rootstocks, so I can cut scion wood from the old Gravenstein Apple this Winter and graft more trees next Spring.

Lots more planting to do now that the weather is warming up. Most of my garden had been pretty neglected, and it is taking time to get it back to nice. There are Rhodies that I bought from Kelly's nursery to go in, and an azalea to put out in front, and my Lavender bed to fix up... it will go next to the old garage/new pot studio. There are five different lavender varieties waiting for a nice sunny spot. I'm still working on putting in my second raised veggie garden bed... the soil is even rockier that I thought, and my veggie starts are about to start bearing fruit! Yikes!! Much larger job than I anticipated.