Tuesday - 361th

On this second day of spring-like beauty, Ed and I opt for an easy morning of reading and writing. After I look in on the cheeps.

 

 

 

And after breakfast of course. And by the way, for the record, I do not eat my usual oatmeal, but instead, I take the time to prepare the Swedish porridge served to me on my last visit to Chicago. Pearled barley, sunflower seeds, flax seeds. Crushed rye, bulgur. Soaked overnight, cooked in the morning. You're supposed to dab it with butter and jam, but some of my habits are just too ingrained and so I dump the usual kefir, fruit and honey on it instead.

But in the early afternoon, I nudge us to go out. We have a big gardening job that we need to do in the early spring and it seems that a sunny and unusually warm day is just right for it. Out come the clippers, out comes the pole saw. We need to trim the fruit trees in the young orchard.

This is perhaps the most important task in any orchard where you hope to have a successful harvest. Letting the branches grow inside the crown of the tree makes for an unhealthy crop of small fruits. Too little light, too heavy a load for the young branches to bear.

Ed claims we never do it correctly and he is right, to an extent: in the early years especially, we did not trim well and we did not protect the trees well enough from deer. Several trees developed an odd shape. And we weren't smart enough to buy only dwarfs so that a number of the trees are just too tall. Still, we work with what we have.

(The big girls and the rooster keep an eye on us. Garden work sometimes means digging and that means worms. Not today, cheepers, not today.)

Later, Ed and I do take a walk, because pruning trees just doesn't get those leg muscles working for you. My Fitbit would have been disappointed! Note how much of the snow has melted in the last handful of days!

(We are near a field of geese. And birds of an unknown to me species. Too, we hear the cranes in the distance. In other words, it's loud out there this evening!)

 

(Celebrating possibly the last "safe" day on the lake...)

A glorious day. Really, the weather was just fantastic. Tomorrow -- the first solid rain of the year.