Garden progress: fruit trees

Ripe choke cherries

Lots of choke cherries

The other day when I was out in the garden, I took a walk around the yard and checked on the trees. I found that the chokecherry trees are producing this year and the birds have not eaten all of them off yet. This morning James picked the tree that is fully ripe, hopefully we will get to the others before the birds do.

 

apples

plums

The apple tree has lots of apples, unusual to have two years in a row of good produce around here. The apples are pretty small this year, and I suppose that is because it was so dry early on. I am not sure if that really makes a difference, but it seems to be this year because the plums are also really small. The good news about the plums is that so far we have not seen any of the webs indicating that little worm in the fruit. I would appreciate getting enough of a crop to make some jelly. The hard part will be that they won’t ripen until after school starts and I am in the middle of that long-term substituting situation. Well it will be good to be busy and to be paid.

Not much else to mention here. We had our first meal from the garden today. I made some stir fry that included the peas that were picked a few days ago. We also put half of a zucchini into it, and James and Paulina ate that part of the stir fry. I dislike how soft and soggy zucchini gets when cooked in stir-fry. I ate the other half of the zucchini grilled with Cajun spice on it, oh yummy!! We had fresh peaches and fresh strawberries for dessert. I don’t think that I will need to nibble on chips this evening, hurrah!! Today is my last day of lounging around. Tomorrow starts my serious effort to drop 5-10 pounds before I have to squeeze into dress clothes five days a week. Yikes this could be a major challenge. Hope you are enjoying the rest of the summer.

Oh my, look what I found!

I can’t believe it. James and I have been going back and forth about this crazy plant in the northeast flower bed. We have pulled it out one year, or so we thought, and nearly killed it the second year before we finally decided to just let it go to see what it was. This year when it came again in the exact same place, we decided to just let it grow until we could figure out what it is. Well last week it bloomed. James looked at it and said, hey you are growing cockle burrs. I just ignored him and the plant. Today, I went out the east door to hang clothes on the line. When I came in I noticed that the flowers had turned into….check it out below.

Raspberry plant.

Ready to pick and the plant is loaded. I am so excited.

So, I bought three plants when we lived in Linton, a raspberry, a blueberry and a blackberry. I had them in pots in the house and they were doing fine. Then they started to die back. Victoria said to get them in the ground, but I must have planted this one and forgotten about it. What a ditz. How could I forget? I guess I was so upset about it dying. We bought another one this year, and it died too. I did stick it in the ground, but James mowed it off. I wonder if it will grow next year. We will have to see. At least I know where that one is. At least I wasn’t so out to lunch when we planted the pear trees, and they have life to them, check it out below.

North pear tree is growing from the bottom.

South pear has some life to it.

Catch you for the rest tomorrow!!